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41 - Lament of a Midnight Rosary (III)

Ah, I lament. I am separate among a separate people.
I would shed no tears if these Christians were killed.
Prostitutes would treat me better than the pride
From whom I’d have to pick my wife.
You give prostitutes bread; you have their time.
You give bread to prideful wives; you have complaint.
What worth does a wife have, if she be a harlot,
If her chastity runs unguarded,
If she has the dress of a wife, but not the spirit?
What point is it, for one to be a devil unmarried,
But then an angel married?
A woman who only becomes more chaste when married?

Of such duplicity, my soul shall celebrate
When the witches’ necks are hung from the gates
And their babes are dashed against the stones.
They think, because they never gave themselves to men,
They are clean before Heaven, chaste virgins,
The maids who lit their lamps,
But to Hell with their evil fashions,
Where down to flaming coals many men are dragged!
The testimony of those who burn in Hell
Shall be the chains which drag them down!
If it be, God have mercy to break such chains,
But for me, if not for God, I would have fell by those Eves,
Who feast upon the Devil’s whispered lies!
They claim sorrow for past sins, but no tears are shed.
They claim so they can marry a man for bread.
What woe, they are Jezebels to the end.