y do you feign that you love them?
You that broke from their constancies,
And the wide calm brows above them!

This was never your true love's speech.
Why do you thrill when you hear it?
You that have ridden out of its reach
The width of the world or near it!

This was never your true love's hair,--
You that chafed when it bound you
Screened from knowledge or shame or care,
In the night that it made around you!

'_All these things I know, I know._
_And that's why my heart is breaking!_'
Then what do you gain by pretending so?
'_The joy of an old wound waking._'

NATURAL THEOLOGY

PRIMITIVE

I ate my fill of a whale that died,
And stranded after a month at sea....
There is a pain in my inside.
Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith?
Look how the Gods have afflicted me!

PAGAN

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
Anything more than a harmless flea?...
The burning plague has taken my household.
Why have my Gods afflicted me?

All my kith and kin are deceased,
Though they were as good as good could be.
I will out and batter the family priest,
Because my Gods have afflicted me.

MEDIAEVAL

My privy and well drain into each other
After the custom of Christendie....
Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
The Saints are helpless for all I offer--
So are the clergy I used to fee
Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,
Because the Lord has afflicted me.

MATERIAL

I run eight hundred hens to the acre.
They die by dozens mysteriously....
I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker.
Why has the Lord afflicted me?
What a return for all my endeavour--
Not to mention the L. S. D.!
I am an atheist now and for ever,
Because this God has afflicted me!

PROGRESSIVE

Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy....
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat.
Why is the Lord afflicting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the _Times_, deriding our parson
Because my God has afflicted me.

CHORUS

We had a kettle, we let it