Pray now, defilers; pray there is no Hell;
For as you dredge all Greatness through the mire,
Yet fear your acts deserving of Its Fire,
Pray now, to quell this dread you cannot quell.
Pray now; then mock and jeer the Great to sell
Your squalid lie; equate your filth; conspire;
And crave Them all to die. With shrill desire,
Pray now; deny this Pit that may untell
Your lie–exact Its Payment for your crime.
And I… will pray Its Fires to be true,
That you, the unredeemable, will rue
Its searing brand–unyielding–as you plead,
Demand discarded Grace to intercede,
And beg… and shriek… and burn… for all of time.
- For Roger Kimball, Author of
the book for which
this sequence is named.
This sonnet is part of a short sequence; click here to read it all:
Filed under: Sonnets Tagged: Art, Fixed Verse Forms, Form, Hell, Italian Sonnet, Literature, Poetry, Rape, Religion and Spirituality, Romantic Realism, Sonnet, The Rape of the Masters, The Rape of the Masters (with introductions)
