The Puritan

IN TENDER May when the sweet laugh of Christ
I Sounds in the fields, and bitter sorrows die,
Death wanes and lovers kiss and everything
Made perfect dances in the earth and sky,
Then near the Maypole where the children sing
A shadow falls, the hand and the hoarse cry
Of one whom winter more than well sufficed.

He is the Puritan under whose tall hat
Evil is nested like an ugly toad,
And in his eye he holds the basilisk,
And in his weathered hand the knotted goad;
Brimstone is on his tongue, for he will risk
Hellfire to pleasure; sin is his abode,
A barn and Bible his best habitat.

He dwells in evil; beauty of the day,
Or drifting snows of spring or flowers wet
Or touch of woman’s hand are not for him;
The flesh of pleasure which he must forget
Walks in his sleep, awakens him more grim;
Deeper he falls into the Devil’s debt,
And harder must he rant and harder pray.

Till every stone that manifests a pose
Beckons him lewdly, binds him to the stake
Where the cold fires of suspicion burn,
And he would gladly die for his name’s sake
And call it righteous; tortures he would learn
To teach that flesh must sting and bones must ache
And hell claim all that happiness bestow.

His is the heresy of gloom, to all
That’s grace a sin, to God a stumbling block,
And to himself damnation. Year by year
He sees the hypocrisy of nature mock
His steadfastness, and in old age his fear
Of beauty strikes him dead, becomes a rock
Fixed like a gargoyle on a cathedral wall.