There is a place that some men know, <br />I cannot see the whole of it <br />Nor how I came there. Long ago <br />Flame burst out of a secret pit <br />Crushing the world with such a light <br />The day-sky fell to moonless black, <br />The kingly sun to hateful night <br />For those, once seeing, turning back: <br />For love so hates mortality <br />Which is the providence of life <br />She will not let it blessed be <br />But curses it with mortal strife, <br />Until beside the blinding rood <br />Within that world-destroying pit <br />-Like young wolves that have tasted blood, <br />Of death, men taste no more of it. <br />So blind, in so severe a place <br />(All life before in the black grave) <br />The last alternatives they face <br />Of life, without the life to save, <br />Being from all salvation weaned- <br />A stag charged both at heel and head: <br />Who would come back is turned a fiend <br />Instructed by the fiery dead.<br /><br />Allen Tate<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-cross-17/
