Explore "The Divine Tragedy" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
JUDAS ISCARIOT. / Lost! Lost! Forever lost! I have betrayed / The innocent blood! O God! if thou art love, / Why didst thou leave me naked to the tempter? / Why didst thou not commission thy swift lightning / To strike me dead? or why did I not perish / With those by Herod slain, the innocent children, / Who went with playthings in their little hands / Into the darkness of the other world, / As if to bed? Or wherefore was I born, / If thou in thy foreknowledge didst perceive / All that I am, and all that I must be? / I know I am not generous, am not gentle, / Like other men; but I have tried to be, / And I have failed. I thought by following him / I should grow like him; but the unclean spirit / That from my childhood up hath tortured me / Hath been too cunning and too strong for me, / Am I to blame for this? Am I to blame / Because I cannot love, and ne'er have known / The love of woman or the love of children? / It is a curse and a fatality, / A mark that hath been set upon my forehead, / That none shall slay me, for it were a mercy / That I were dead, or never had been born.
Too late! too late! I shall not see Him more / Among the living. That sweet, patient face / Will never more rebuke me, nor those lips / Repeat the words: One of you shall betray me! / It stung me into madness. How I loved, / Yet hated Him: But in the other world! / I will be there before Him, and will wait / Until he comes, and fall down on my knees / And kiss his feet, imploring pardon, pardon!