Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MADONNA IN FLANDERS, by ERNEST HARTSOCK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MADONNA IN FLANDERS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Drunk as the glamor of disgrace
Last Line: Hell's joke is heaven's epitaph.
Subject(s): Death; Heaven; Hell; Mary. Mother Of Jesus; Mothers & Sons; Soldiers; Women In The Bible; Dead, The; Paradise; Virgin Mary


Drunk as the glamor of disgrace
A torpid shadow scars her face;
Golgotha seems her star-veiled skull;
Her eyes glow dull and pitiful.

As like the ghoul of God she picks
From tumid fields bouquets of sticks,
And mourns that such blooms leaped from seeds
Too rich for these trite paeans of weeds.

Alas, that Lust had crucified
New Gods in every man who died,
And made the cross the signpost of
The street to Hate, not the road to Love. ...

Sad Mother of immortal sons,
No wonder your quaint weeping runs
Like laughter of infernal nuns
In convents of oblivions.

No wonder Hell delights to hear
Opposing prayers for vengeance rear
Their hydra heads in pious guise
To the sad Monarch of the skies.

There is more pleasure stirred in Hell
For each fair youth the Christians fell
Than for a million men who sin
Against a moral discipline.

It is not strange, it is not queer
That Hell is quenched with Heaven's tear;
It is not strange, it is not odd
That Satan's laughs are the groans of God.

It is to mourn, it is to weep
That God gives his beloved sleep;
It is to smile, it is to laugh;
Hell's joke is Heaven's epitaph.





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