Selected Poems and Prose Read Online

The universe,

In nature’s silent eloquence, declares

That all fulfil the works of love and joy,—

All but the outcast, man. He fabricates

200The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth

The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up

The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe,

Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,

Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,

205Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch

Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth

A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn

Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;

A mother only to those puling babes

210Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men

The playthings of their babyhood, and mar,

In self-important childishness, that peace

Which men alone appreciate?

         Spirit of Nature! no.

215The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs

   Alike in every human heart.

         Thou, aye, erectest there

   Thy throne of power unappealable:

   Thou art the judge beneath whose nod

220   Man’s brief and frail authority

         Is powerless as the wind

         That passeth idly by.

   Thine the tribunal which surpasseth

      The shew of human justice,

225         As God surpasses man.

         Spirit of Nature! thou

Life of interminable multitudes;

   Soul of those mighty spheres

Whose changeless paths thro’ Heaven’s deep silence lie;

230      Soul of that smallest being,

         The dwelling of whose life

      Is one faint April sun-gleam;—

         Man, like these passive things,

Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth:

235   Like theirs, his age of endless peace,

      Which time is fast maturing,

         Will swiftly, surely come;

And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,

         Will be without a flaw

240   Marring its perfect symmetry.

IV

How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,

Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear,

Were discord to the speaking quietude

That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault,

5Studded with stars unutterably bright,

Through which the moon’s unclouded grandeur rolls,

Seems like a canopy which love had spread

To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,

Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;

10Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,

So stainless, that their white and glittering spires

Tinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castled steep,

Whose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower

So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it

15A metaphor of peace;—all form a scene

Where musing solitude might love to lift

Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;

Where silence undisturbed might watch alone,

So cold, so bright, so still.

                                 The orb of day,

20In southern climes, o’er ocean’s waveless field

Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath

Steals o’er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve

Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;

And vesper’s image on the western main

25Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:

Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,

Roll o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar

Of distant thunder mutters awfully;

Tempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom

30That shrouds the boiling surge; the pityless fiend,

With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;

The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave

Beneath its jagged gulf.

                              Ah! whence yon glare

That fires the arch of heaven?—that dark red smoke

35Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched

In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow

Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!

Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf’ning peals

In countless echoes through the mountains ring,

40Startling pale midnight on her starry throne!

Now swells the intermingling din; the jar

Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;

The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,

The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men

45Inebriate with rage:—loud, and more loud

The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene,

And o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws

His cold and bloody shroud.—Of all the men

Whom day’s departing beam saw blooming there,

50In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts

That beat with anxious life at sun-set there;

How few survive, how few are beating now!

All is deep silence, like the fearful calm

That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause;

55Save when the frantic wail of widowed love

Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan

With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay

Wrapt round its struggling powers.

                                             The grey morn

Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke

60Before the icy wind slow rolls away,

And the bright beams of frosty morning dance

Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood

Even to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms,

And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments

65Death’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path

Of the outsallying victors: far behind,

Black ashes note where their proud city stood.

Within yon forest is a gloomy glen—

Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,

70Waves o’er a warrior’s tomb.

                                    I see thee shrink,

Surpassing Spirit!—wert thou human else?

I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet

Across thy stainless features: yet fear not;

This is no unconnected misery,

75Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.

Man’s evil nature, that apology

Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up

For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood

Which desolates the discord-wasted land.

80From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose,

Whose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe,

Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe

Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;

And where its venomed exhalations spread

85Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay

Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones

Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,

A garden shall arise, in loveliness

Surpassing fabled Eden.

                              Hath Nature’s soul,

90That formed this world so beautiful, that spread

Earth’s lap with plenty, and life’s smallest chord

Strung to unchanging unison, that gave

The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,

That yielded to the wanderers of the deep

95The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,

And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust

With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone,

Partial in causeless malice, wantonly

Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul

100Blasted with withering curses; placed afar

The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,

But serving on the frightful gulph to glare

Rent wide beneath his footsteps?

                                          Nature!—no!

Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower

105Even in its tender bud; their influence darts

Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins

Of desolate society. The child,

Ere he can lisp his mother’s sacred name,

Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts

110His baby-sword even in a hero’s mood.

This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge

Of devastated earth; whilst specious names,

Learnt in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour,

Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims

115Bright reason’s ray, and sanctifies the sword

Upraised to shed a brother’s innocent blood.

Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man

Inherits vice and misery, when force

And falshood hang even o’er the cradled babe,

120Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.

Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps

From its new tenement, and looks abroad

For happiness and sympathy, how stern

And desolate a tract is this wide world!

125How withered all the buds of natural good!

No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms

Of pityless power! On its wretched frame,

Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe

Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung

130By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds

Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,

May breathe not. The untainting light of day

May visit not its longings. It is bound

Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are forged

135Long ere its being: all liberty and love

And peace is torn from its defencelessness;

Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed

To abjectness and bondage!

Throughout this varied and eternal world

140Soul is the only element, the block

That for uncounted ages has remained

The moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight

Is active, living spirit. Every grain

Is sentient both in unity and part,

145And the minutest atom comprehends

A world of loves and hatreds; these beget

Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;

Hence will and thought and action, all the germs

Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,

150That variegate the eternal universe.

Soul is not more polluted than the beams

Of heaven’s pure orb, ere round their rapid lines

The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds

155Of high resolve, on fancy’s boldest wing

To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn

The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste

The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.

Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,

160To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,

To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame

Of natural love in sensualism, to know

That hour as blest when on his worthless days

The frozen hand of death shall set its seal,

165Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.

The one is man that shall hereafter be;

The other, man as vice has made him now.

War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,

The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade,

170And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones

Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,

The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.

Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround

Their palaces, participate the crimes

175That force defends, and from a nation’s rage

Secure the crown, which all the curses reach

That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.

These are the hired bravos who defend

The tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear:

180These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,

The refuse of society, the dregs

Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend

Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,

All that is mean and villainous, with rage

185Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt,

Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,

Honour and power, then are sent abroad

To do their work. The pestilence that stalks

In gloomy triumph through some eastern land

190Is less destroying. They cajole with gold,

And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth

Already crushed with servitude: he knows

His wretchedness too late, and cherishes

Repentance for his ruin, when his doom

195Is sealed in gold and blood!

Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare

The feet of justice in the toils of law,

Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still;

And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold,

200Sneering at public virtue, which beneath

Their pityless tread lies torn and trampled, where

Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.

Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,

Without a hope, a passion, or a love,

205Who, through a life of luxury and lies,

Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

Support the system whence their honours flow …

They have three words:—well tyrants know their use,

Well pay them for the loan, with usury

210Torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven.

A vengeful, pityless, and almighty fiend,

Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage

Of tameless tygers hungering for blood.

Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

215Where poisonous and undying worms prolong

Eternal misery to those hapless slaves

Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.

And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie

Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe

220Before the mockeries of earthly power.

These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,

Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,

Omnipotent in wickedness: the while

Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does

225His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend

Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.

They rise, they fall; one generation comes

Yielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe.

It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!

230Red glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom,

Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.

He has invented lying words and modes,

Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;

Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,

235To lure the heedless victim to the toils

Spread round the valley of its paradise.

Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!

Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts

Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,

240With whom thy master was:—or thou delightst

In numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain,

All misery weighing nothing in the scale

Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load

With cowardice and crime the groaning land,

245A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!

Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e’er

Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days

Days of unsatisfying listlessness?

Dost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is o’er,

250‘When will the morning come?’ Is not thy youth

A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?

Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?

Are not thy views of unregretted death

Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,

255Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,

Incapable of judgment, hope, or love?

And dost thou wish the errors to survive

That bar thee from all sympathies of good,

After the miserable interest

260Thou holdst in their protraction? When the grave

Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,

Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth

To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,

Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,

265That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?

V

Thus do the generations of the earth

Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,

Surviving still the imperishable change

That renovates the world; even as the leaves

5Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped

For many seasons there, though long they choke,

Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,

All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees

10From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,

Lie level with the earth to moulder there,

They fertilize the land they long deformed,

Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs

Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,

15Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.

Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights

The fairest feelings of the opening heart,

Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil

Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,

20And judgment cease to wage unnatural war

With passion’s unsubduable array.

Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!

Rival in crime and falshood, aping all

The wanton horrors of her bloody play;

25Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,

Shunning the light, and owning not its name—

Compelled, by its deformity, to screen

With flimsy veil of justice and of right,

Its unattractive lineaments, that scare

30All, save the brood of ignorance: at once

The cause and the effect of tyranny;

Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile;

Dead to all love but of its abjectness,

With heart impassive by more noble powers

35Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;

Despising its own miserable being,

Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.

Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange

Of all that human art or nature yield;

40Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,

And natural kindness hasten to supply

From the full fountain of its boundless love,

For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.

Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade

45No solitary virtue dares to spring,

But poverty and wealth with equal hand

Scatter their withering curses, and unfold

The doors of premature and violent death,

To pining famine and full-fed disease,

50To all that shares the lot of human life,

Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain,

That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,

The signet of its all-enslaving power

55Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:

Before whose image bow the vulgar great,

The vainly rich, the miserable proud,

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

And with blind feelings reverence the power

60That grinds them to the dust of misery.

But in the temple of their hireling hearts

Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn

All earthly things but virtue.

Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,

65Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame

To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,

Success has sanctioned to a credulous world

The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.

His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes

70The despot numbers; from his cabinet

These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,

Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,

Beneath a vulgar master, to perform

A task of cold and brutal drudgery;—

75Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,

Scarce living pullies of a dead machine,

Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,

That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

The harmony and happiness of man

80Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts

His nature to the heaven of its pride,

Is bartered for the poison of his soul;

The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,

Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,

85Withering all passion but of slavish fear,

Extinguishing all free and generous love

Of enterprize and daring, even the pulse

That fancy kindles in the beating heart

To mingle with sensation, it destroys,—

90Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,

The groveling hope of interest and gold,

Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed

Even by hypocrisy.

                        And statesmen boast

Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives

95After the ruin of their hearts, can gild

The bitter poison of a nation’s woe,

Can turn the worship of the servile mob

To their corrupt and glaring idol fame,

From virtue, trampled by its iron tread,

100Although its dazzling pedestal be raised

Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,

With desolated dwellings smoking round.

The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side,

To deeds of charitable intercourse

105And bare fulfilment of the common laws

Of decency and prejudice, confines

The struggling nature of his human heart,

Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds

A passing tear perchance upon the wreck

110Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door

The frightful waves are driven,—when his son

Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion

Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,

Whose life is misery, and fear, and care;

115Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;

Who ever hears his famished offsprings scream;

Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gaze

Forever meets, and the proud rich man’s eye

Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene

120Of thousands like himself;—he little heeds

The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate

Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn

The vain and bitter mockery of words,

Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds,

125And unrestrained but by the arm of power,

That knows and dreads his enmity.

The iron rod of penury still compels

Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,

And poison, with unprofitable toil,

130A life too void of solace, to confirm

The very chains that bind him to his doom.

Nature, impartial in munificence,

Has gifted man with all-subduing will.

Matter, with all its transitory shapes,

135Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,

That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.

How many a rustic Milton has passed by,

Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,

In unremitting drudgery and care!

140How many a vulgar Cato has compelled

His energies, no longer tameless then,

To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!

How many a Newton, to whose passive ken

Those mighty spheres that gem infinity

145Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven

To light the midnights of his native town!

Yet every heart contains perfection’s germ:

The wisest of the sages of the earth,

That ever from the stores of reason drew

150Science and truth, and virtue’s dreadless tone,

Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,

Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued

With pure desire and universal love,

Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,

155Untainted passion, elevated will,

Which death (who even would linger long in awe

Within his noble presence, and beneath

His changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.

Him, every slave now dragging through the filth

160Of some corrupted city his sad life,

Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,

Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense

With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,

Or madly rushing through all violent crime,

165To move the deep stagnation of his soul,—

Might imitate and equal.

                                 But mean lust

Has bound its chains so tight around the earth,

That all within it but the virtuous man

Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach

170The price prefixed by selfishness, to all

But him of resolute and unchanging will;

Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,

Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,

Can bribe to yield his elevated soul

175To tyranny or falshood, though they wield

With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

All things are sold: the very light of heaven

Is venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,

The smallest and most despicable things

180That lurk in the abysses of the deep,

All objects of our life, even life itself,

And the poor pittance which the laws allow

Of liberty, the fellowship of man,

Those duties which his heart of human love

185Should urge him to perform instinctively,

Are bought and sold as in a public mart

Of undisguising selfishness, that sets

On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

190Is turned to deadliest agony, old age

Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms,

And youth’s corrupted impulses prepare

A life of horror from the blighting bane

Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

195From unenjoying sensualism, has filled

All human life with hydra-headed woes.

Falshood demands but gold to pay the pangs

Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest

Sets no great value on his hireling faith:

200A little passing pomp, some servile souls,

Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,

Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe

To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,

Can make him minister to tyranny.

205More daring crime requires a loftier meed:

Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends

His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,

When the dread eloquence of dying men,

Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,

210Assails that nature, whose applause he sells

For the gross blessings of a patriot mob,

For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,

And for a cold world’s good word,—viler still!

There is a nobler glory, which survives

215Until our being fades, and, solacing

All human care, accompanies its change;

Deserts not virtue in the dungeon’s gloom,

And, in the precincts of the palace, guides

Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;

220Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,

Even when, from power’s avenging hand, he takes

Its sweetest, last and noblest title—death;

—The consciousness of good, which neither gold,

Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,

225Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,

Unalterable will, quenchless desire

Of universal happiness, the heart

That beats with it in unison, the brain,

Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change

230Reason’s rich stores for its eternal weal.

This commerce of sincerest virtue needs

No mediative signs of selfishness,

No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,

No balancings of prudence, cold and long;

235In just and equal measure all is weighed,

One scale contains the sum of human weal,

And one, the good man’s heart.

                                          How vainly seek

The selfish for that happiness denied

To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,

240Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,

Who covet power they know not how to use,

And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,—

Madly they frustrate still their own designs;

And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy

245Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,

Pining regrets, and vain repentances,

Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade

Their valueless and miserable lives.

But hoary-headed selfishness has felt

250Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:

A brighter morn awaits the human day,

When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts

Shall be a commerce of good words and works;

When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,

255The fear of infamy, disease and woe,

War with its million horrors, and fierce hell

Shall live but in the memory of time,

Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,

Look back, and shudder at his younger years.

VI

         All touch, all eye, all ear,

The Spirit felt the Fairy’s burning speech.

   O’er the thin texture of its frame,

The varying periods painted changing glows,

5         As on a summer even,

When soul-enfolding music floats around,

   The stainless mirror of the lake

   Re-images the eastern gloom,

Mingling convulsively its purple hues

10         With sunset’s burnished gold.

         Then thus the Spirit spoke:

It is a wild and miserable world!

         Thorny, and full of care,

Which every fiend can make his prey at will.

15   O Fairy! in the lapse of years,

         Is there no hope in store?

         Will yon vast suns roll on

   Interminably, still illuming

   The night of so many wretched souls,

20         And see no hope for them?

Will not the universal Spirit e’er

Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?

         The Fairy calmly smiled

In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope

25   Suffused the Spirit’s lineaments.

Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts,

Which ne’er could rack an everlasting soul,

That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.

Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,

30         Falshood, mistake, and lust;

         But the eternal world

Contains at once the evil and the cure.

Some eminent in virtue shall start up,

         Even in perversest time:

35The truths of their pure lips, that never die,

Shall bind the scorpion falshood with a wreath

         Of ever-living flame,

Until the monster sting itself to death.

   How sweet a scene will earth become!

40Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place,

Symphonious with the planetary spheres;

When man, with changeless nature coalescing,

Will undertake regeneration’s work,

When its ungenial poles no longer point

45         To the red and baleful sun

         That faintly twinkles there.

         Spirit! on yonder earth,

   Falshood now triumphs; deadly power

Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!

50   Madness and misery are there!

The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide,

Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy,

Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.

Now, to the scene I shew, in silence turn,

55And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,

Which nature soon, with recreating hand,

Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.

How bold the flight of passion’s wandering wing,

How swift the step of reason’s firmer tread,

60How calm and sweet the victories of life,

How terrorless the triumph of the grave!

How powerless were the mightiest monarch’s arm,

Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!

How ludicrous the priest’s dogmatic roar!

65The weight of his exterminating curse,

How light! and his affected charity,

To suit the pressure of the changing times,

What palpable deceit!—but for thy aid,

Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,

70Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,

And heaven with slaves!

Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!—the stars,

Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,

Were gods to the distempered playfulness

75Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,

The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,

All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,

Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon

Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy,

80More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,

Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,

Which, from sensation’s relics, fancy culls;

The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,

The genii of the elements, the powers

85That give a shape to nature’s varied works,

Had life and place in the corrupt belief

Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands

Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave

Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain;

90Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,

Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:

Their everlasting and unchanging laws

Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst

Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up

95The elements of all that thou didst know;

The changing seasons, winter’s leafless reign,

The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,

The eternal orbs that beautify the night,

The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon,

100Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,

And all their causes, to an abstract point

Converging, thou didst bend, and called it GOD!

The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,

The merciful, and the avenging God!

105Who, prototype of human misrule, sits

High in heaven’s realm, upon a golden throne,

Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,

Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves

Of fate, whom he created in his sport,

110To triumph in their torments when they fell!

Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke

Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,

Blotting the constellations; and the cries

Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence

115And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds

Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;

Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,

And thou didst laugh to hear the mother’s shriek

120Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel

Felt cold in her torn entrails!

Religion! thou wert then in manhood’s prime:

But age crept on: one God would not suffice

For senile puerility; thou framedst

125A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut

Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend

Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford

A plea for sating the unnatural thirst

For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,

130That still consumed thy being, even when

Thou heardst the step of fate;—that flames might light

Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks

Of parents dying on the pile that burned

To light their children to thy paths, the roar

135Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries

Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,

         Might sate thine hungry ear

         Even on the bed of death!

But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs;

140Thou art descending to the darksome grave,

Unhonored and unpitied, but by those

Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,

Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun

Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night

145That long has lowered above the ruined world.

Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused

A Spirit of activity and life,

That knows no term, cessation, or decay;

150That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,

Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,

Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe

In the dim newness of its being feels

The impulses of sublunary things,

155And all is wonder to unpractised sense:

But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,

Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,

Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;

160And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly

Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes

Its undecaying battlement, presides,

Apportioning with irresistible law

The place each spring of its machine shall fill;

165So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap

Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven

Heaven’s lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords,

Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,

Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,

170All seems unlinked contingency and chance:

No atom of this turbulence fulfils

A vague and unnecessitated task,

Or acts but as it must and ought to act.

Even the minutest molecule of light,

175That in an April sunbeam’s fleeting glow

Fulfills its destined, though invisible work,

The universal Spirit guides; nor less,

When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,

Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,

180That, blind, they there may dig each other’s graves,

And call the sad work glory, does it rule

All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,

No working of the tyrant’s moody mind,

Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast

185Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel,

Nor the events enchaining every will,

That from the depths of unrecorded time

Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass

Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,

190Soul of the Universe! eternal spring

Of life and death, of happiness and woe,

Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene

That floats before our eyes in wavering light,

Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,

195         Whose chains and massy walls

         We feel, but cannot see.

Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,

Necessity! thou mother of the world!

Unlike the God of human error, thou

200Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice

Of man’s weak will belongs no more to thee

Than do the changeful passions of his breast

To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,

Whose horrible lusts spread misery o’er the world,

205And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride,

His being, in the sight of happiness,

That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,

Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,

And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords

210A temple where the vows of happy love

Are registered, are equal in thy sight:

No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge

And favoritism, and worst desire of fame

Thou knowest not: all that the wide world contains

215Are but thy passive instruments, and thou

Regardst them all with an impartial eye,

Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,

   Because thou hast not human sense,

   Because thou art not human mind.

220   Yes! when the sweeping storm of time

Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanes

And broken altars of the almighty fiend,

Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood

Through centuries clotted there, has floated down

225The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live

Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,

   Which, nor the tempest breath of time,

   Nor the interminable flood,

   Over earth’s slight pageant rolling,

230         Availeth to destroy,—

The sensitive extension of the world,

   That wonderous and eternal fane,

Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,

To do the will of strong necessity,

235   And life, in multitudinous shapes,

Still pressing forward where no term can be,

   Like hungry and unresting flame

Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.

VII

SPIRIT

I was an infant when my mother went

To see an atheist burned. She took me there:

The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;

The multitude was gazing silently;

5And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,

Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,

Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:

The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;

His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;

10His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob

Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.

Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man

Has said, There is no God.

FAIRY

                                    There is no God!

Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed:

15Let heaven and earth, let man’s revolving race,

His ceaseless generations tell their tale;

Let every part depending on the chain

That links it to the whole, point to the hand

That grasps its term! let every seed that falls

20In silent eloquence unfold its store

Of argument: infinity within,

Infinity without, belie creation;

The exterminable spirit it contains

Is nature’s only God; but human pride

25Is skilful to invent most serious names

To hide its ignorance.

                           The name of God

Has fenced about all crime with holiness,

Himself the creature of his worshippers,

Whose names and attributes and passions change,

30Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,

Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,

Still serving o’er the war-polluted world

For desolation’s watchword; whether hosts

Stain his death-blushing chariot wheels, as on

35Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise

A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;

Or countless partners of his power divide

His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke

Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,

40Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,

Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven

In honor of his name; or, last and worst,

Earth groans beneath religion’s iron age,

And priests dare babble of a God of peace,

45Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,

Murdering the while, uprooting every germ

Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,

Making the earth a slaughter-house!

         O Spirit! through the sense

50By which thy inner nature was apprised

   Of outward shews, vague dreams have rolled,

   And varied reminiscences have waked

         Tablets that never fade;

   All things have been imprinted there,

55   The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,

   Even the unshapeliest lineaments

      Of wild and fleeting visions

         Have left a record there

         To testify of earth.

60These are my empire, for to me is given

The wonders of the human world to keep,

And fancy’s thin creations to endow

With manner, being, and reality;

Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams

65Of human error’s dense and purblind faith,

I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.

         Ahasuerus, rise!

         A strange and woe-worn wight

   Arose beside the battlement,

70         And stood unmoving there.

His inessential figure cast no shade

         Upon the golden floor;

His port and mien bore mark of many years,

And chronicles of untold ancientness

75Were legible within his beamless eye:

   Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;

Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;

The wisdom of old age was mingled there

   With youth’s primaeval dauntlessness;

80         And inexpressible woe,

Chastened by fearless resignation, gave

An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

SPIRIT

            Is there a God?

AHASUERUS

Is there a God!—aye, an almighty God,

85And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice

Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound;

The fiery-visaged firmament expressed

Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned

To swallow all the dauntless and the good

90That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,

Girt as it was with power. None but slaves

Survived,—cold-blooded slaves, who did the work

Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls

No honest indignation ever urged

95To elevated daring, to one deed

Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.

These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,

Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked

With human blood, and hideous paeans rung

100Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard

His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts

Had raised him to his eminence in power,

Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,

And confidant of the all-knowing one.

105         These were Jehovah’s words.

From an eternity of idleness

I, God, awoke; in seven days’ toil made earth

From nothing; rested, and created man:

I placed him in a paradise, and there

110Planted the tree of evil, so that he

Might eat and perish, and my soul procure

Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,

Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,

All misery to my fame. The race of men

115Chosen to my honor, with impunity

May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.

Here I command thee hence to lead them on,

Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops

Wade on the promised soil through woman’s blood,

120And make my name be dreaded through the land.

Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe

Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,

With every soul on this ungrateful earth,

Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even all

125Shall perish, to fulfill the blind revenge

(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.

                        The murderer’s brow

Quivered with horror.

                              God omnipotent,

Is there no mercy? must our punishment

130Be endless? will long ages roll away,

And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made

In mockery and wrath this evil earth?

Mercy becomes the powerful—be but just:

O God! repent and save.

                                 One way remains:

135I will beget a son, and he shall bear

The sins of all the world; he shall arise

In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge

The universal crime; so that the few

140On whom my grace descends, those who are marked

As vessels to the honor of their God,

May credit this strange sacrifice, and save

Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,

Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,

145But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave.

Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,

Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:

These in a gulph of anguish and of flame

Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,

150Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,

Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,

My honor, and the justice of their doom.

What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts

Of purity, with radiant genius bright,

155Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray?

Many are called, but few will I elect.

Do thou my bidding, Moses!

                                       Even the murderer’s cheek

Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips

Scarce faintly uttered—O almighty one,

160I tremble and obey!

O Spirit! centuries have set their seal

On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,

Since the Incarnate came: humbly he came,

Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape

165Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard,

Save by the rabble of his native town,

Even as a parish demagogue. He led

The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace,

In semblance; but he lit within their souls

170The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword

He brought on earth to satiate with the blood

Of truth and freedom his malignant soul.

At length his mortal frame was led to death.

I stood beside him: on the torturing cross

175No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;

And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed

The massacres and miseries which his name

Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,

Go! go! in mockery.

180A smile of godlike malice reillumined

His fading lineaments.—I go, he cried,

But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth

Eternally.——–The dampness of the grave

Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,

185And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil.

When I awoke hell burned within my brain,

Which staggered on its seat; for all around

The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,

Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,

190And in their various attitudes of death

My murdered children’s mute and eyeless sculls

Glared ghastily upon me.

                                 But my soul,

From sight and sense of the polluting woe

Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer

195Hell’s freedom to the servitude of heaven.

Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began

My lonely and unending pilgrimage,

Resolved to wage unweariable war

With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl

200Defiance at his impotence to harm

Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand

That barred my passage to the peaceful grave

Has crushed the earth to misery, and given

Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.

205These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn

Of weak, unstable and precarious power;

Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;

So, when they turned but from the massacre

Of unoffending infidels, to quench

210Their thirst for ruin in the very blood

That flowed in their own veins, and pityless zeal

Froze every human feeling, as the wife

Sheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel,

Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;

215And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood

Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,

Scarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught waged,

Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath;

Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,

220Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,

No remnant of the exterminated faith

Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,

With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,

That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.

225Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe

The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,

Confirming all unnatural impulses,

To sanctify their desolating deeds;

And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross

230O’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun

On showers of gore from the upflashing steel

Of safe assassination, and all crime

Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord,

And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.

235Spirit! no year of my eventful being

Has passed unstained by crime and misery,

Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked his slaves

With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile

The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red

240With murder, feign to stretch the other out

For brotherhood and peace; and that they now

Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds

Are marked with all the narrowness and crime

That freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,

245Reason may claim our gratitude, who now

Establishing the imperishable throne

Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain

The unprevailing malice of my foe,

Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,

250Adds impotent eternities to pain,

Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast

To see the smiles of peace around them play,

To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.

Thus have I stood,—through a wild waste of years

255Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,

Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,

Mocking my powerless tyrant’s horrible curse

With stubborn and unalterable will,

Even as a giant oak, which heaven’s fierce flame

260Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand

A monument of fadeless ruin there;

Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves

The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,

   As in the sun-light’s calm it spreads

265   Its worn and withered arms on high

To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.

         The Fairy waved her wand:

         Ahasuerus fled

Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,

270That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,

         Flee from the morning beam:

   The matter of which dreams are made

   Not more endowed with actual life

   Than this phantasmal portraiture

275   Of wandering human thought.

VIII

The present and the past thou hast beheld:

It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn

   The secrets of the future.—Time!

Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,

5Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,

And from the cradles of eternity,

Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep

By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,

Tear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, behold

10         Thy glorious destiny!

         Joy to the Spirit came.

Through the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil,

Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:

         Earth was no longer hell;

15         Love, freedom, health, had given

Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,

         And all its pulses beat

Symphonious to the planetary spheres:

         Then dulcet music swelled

20Concordant with the life-strings of the soul;

It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,

Catching new life from transitory death,—

Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,

That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea

25And dies on the creation of its breath,

And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:

         Was the pure stream of feeling

         That sprung from these sweet notes,

And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies

30With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.

         Joy to the Spirit came,—

   Such joy as when a lover sees

The chosen of his soul in happiness,

         And witnesses her peace

35Whose woe to him were bitterer than death,

         Sees her unfaded cheek

Glow mantling in first luxury of health,

         Thrills with her lovely eyes,

Which like two stars amid the heaving main

40         Sparkle through liquid bliss.

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:

I will not call the ghost of ages gone

To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;

         The present now is past,

45And those events that desolate the earth

Have faded from the memory of Time,

Who dares not give reality to that

Whose being I annul.