Queen Mab Read Online

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They started from dreams of slaughtered men,

And, by the light of her poison eye,

Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully:

The dreadful stench of her torches' flare,

Fed with human fat, polluted the air:

The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries

Of the many-mingling miseries

As on she trod, ascended high

And trumpeted my victory! –

Brother, tell what thou hast done.

Vice.

I have extinguished the noonday sun,

In the carnage-smoke of battles won:

Famine, Murder, Hell and Power

Were glutted in that glorious hour

Which searchless fate had stamped for me

With the seal of her security . ...

For the bloated wretch on yonder throne

Commanded the bloody fray to rise.

Like me he joyed at the stifled moan

Wrung from a nation's miseries;

While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled,

In ecstasies of malice smiled:

They thought 'twas theirs, – but mine the deed!

Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed –

Ten thousand victims madly bleed.

They dream that tyrants goad them there

With poisonous war to taint the air:

These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,

Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,

And with their gains to lift my name

Restless they plan from night to morn:

I – I do all; without my aid

Thy daughter, that relentless maid,

Could never o'er a death-bed urge

The fury of her venomed scourge.

Falsehood.

Brother, well: – the world is ours;

And whether thou or I have won,

The pestilence expectant lowers

On all beneath yon blasted sun.

Our joys, our toils, our honours meet

In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:

A short-lived hope, unceasing care,

Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,

A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep

Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep,

A tyrant's dream, a coward's start,

The ice that clings to a priestly heart,

A judge's frown, a courtier's smile,

Make the great whole for which we toil;

And, brother, whether thou or I

Have done the work of misery,

It little boots: thy toil and pain,

Without my aid, were more than vain;

And but for thee I ne'er had sate

The guardian of Heaven's palace gate.

A4 Thus do the generations of the earth

Go to the grave, and issue from the womb.

»One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.« – Ecclesiastes, chap. i. vv. 4-7.

A5 Even as the leaves

Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

Has scattered on the forest soil.

Oih per pyllon geneh, toihde kai andron.

Pylla ta men tA anemos xamadis xeei, alla de tA ylh

Thletoosa pyei, earos dA epogignetai orh.

Os andron geneh, h men pyei, h dA apolhgei.

ILIAD. Z, l. 146.

A6 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.

Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis

E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;

Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas,

Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.

Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri

Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;

Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere

Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,

Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre

Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae;

Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;

Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore

Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.

O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!

Lucret. lib. ii.

A7 And statesmen boast

Of wealth!

There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country's prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until »jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,« flatters himself that he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its continuance; and many a fête has been given, many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to labour, – for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him: – no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulnessB2: the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.

I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an equal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of the human race.

Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burthen.

English reformers exclaim against sinecures, – but the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the loss of all real comfort.

»The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each man's share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of enjoyment.

. . .