“The devil took Jesus to a high mountain
and showed him all the world and said, I'll
give you all of this if you'll worship me.”
.
The Third Temptation
LISTEN
He watched with all his organs of concern
How princes walk, what wives and children say;
Re-opened old graves in his heart to learn
What laws the dead had died to disobey.
And came reluctantly to his conclusion:
“All the arm-chair philosophers are false;
To love another adds to the confusion;
The song of pity is the Devil's Waltz.”
And bowed to fate and was successful so
that he was king of all the creatures:
Yet, shaking in his autumn nightmare, saw,
Approaching down a ruined corridor,
A figure with his own distorted features
That wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.
.
by W.H. Auden
from Selected Poems
Vintage Books, 1975