Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

'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 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year _5 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 From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, _10 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, Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. _15 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, And judgement cease to wage unnatural war _20 With passion's unsubduable array. Twin-sister of religion, selfishness! Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all The wanton horrors of her bloody play; Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, _25 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 All, save the brood of ignorance: at once _30 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 Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; _35 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; Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, _40 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 No solitary virtue dares to spring, _45 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, To all that shares the lot of human life, _50 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 Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: _55 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 That grinds them to the dust of misery. _60 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, Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame _65 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 The despot numbers; from his cabinet _70 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;-- Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, _75 Scarce living pulleys 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 Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts _80 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, Withering all passion but of slavish fear, _85 Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys,-- Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, _90 The grovelling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy. And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives After the ruin of their hearts, can gild _95 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, Although its dazzling pedestal be raised _100 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, With desolated dwellings smoking round. The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside, To deeds of charitable intercourse, And bare fulfilment of the common laws _105 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 Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door _110 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; Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; _115 Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream, Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene Of thousands like himself;--he little heeds _120 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, And unrestrained but by the arm of power, _125 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, A life too void of solace to confirm _130 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, Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, _135 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! How many a vulgar Cato has compelled _140 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 Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven _145 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 Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, _150 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, Untainted passion, elevated will, _155 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 Of some corrupted city his sad life, _160 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, To move the deep stagnation of his soul,-- _165 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 The price prefixed by selfishness, to all _170 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 To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield _175 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 That lurk in the abysses of the deep, _180 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 Should urge him to perform instinctively, _185 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 Is turned to deadliest agony, old age _190 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 From unenjoying sensualism, has filled _195 All human life with hydra-headed woes.

'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest Sets no great value on his hireling faith: A little passing pomp, some servile souls, _200 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. More daring crime requires a loftier meed: _205 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, Assails that nature, whose applause he sells _210 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 Until our being fades, and, solacing _215 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; Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, _220 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 Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,-- _225 Unalterable will, quenchless desire Of universal happiness, the heart That beats with it in unison, the brain, Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. _230

'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs No mediative signs of selfishness, No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, No balancings of prudence, cold and long; In just and equal measure all is weighed, _235 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, Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, _240 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 Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, _245 Pining regrets, and vain repentances, Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade Their valueless and miserable lives.

'But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: _250 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, The fear of infamy, disease and woe, _255 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.'

6.

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, As on a summer even, _5 When soul-enfolding music floats around, The stainless mirror of the lake Re-images the eastern gloom, Mingling convulsively its purple hues With sunset's burnished gold. _10

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. O Fairy! in the lapse of years, _15 Is there no hope in store? Will yon vast suns roll on Interminably, still illuming The night of so many wretched souls, And see no hope for them? _20 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 Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. _25 '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, Falsehood, mistake, and lust; _30 But the eternal world Contains at once the evil and the cure. Some eminent in virtue shall start up, Even in perversest time: The truths of their pure lips, that never die, _35 Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath Of ever-living flame, Until the monster sting itself to death.

'How sweet a scene will earth become! Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, _40 Symphonious with the planetary spheres; When man, with changeless Nature coalescing, Will undertake regeneration's work, When its ungenial poles no longer point To the red and baleful sun _45 That faintly twinkles there.

'Spirit! on yonder earth, Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth! Madness and misery are there! _50 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 show, in silence turn, And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, _55 Which Nature soon, with re-creating 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, How calm and sweet the victories of life, _60 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! The weight of his exterminating curse _65 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, Who peoplest earth with demons, Hell with men, _70 And Heaven with slaves!

'Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!--the stars, Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, Were gods to the distempered playfulness Of thy untutored infancy: the trees, _75 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 becam'st, a boy, More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, _80 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 That give a shape to Nature's varied works, _85 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; Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, _90 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 The elements of all that thou didst know; _95 The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, The budding of the Heaven-breathing trees, The eternal orbs that beautify the night, The sunrise, and the setting of the moon, Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, _100 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! Who, prototype of human misrule, sits _105 High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work, Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves Of fate, whom He created, in his sport, To triumph in their torments when they fell! _110 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 And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds _115 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 Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel _120 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 A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut _125 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, That still consumed thy being, even when _130 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 Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries _135 Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, Might sate thine hungry ear Even on the bed of death!

'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave, _140 Unhonoured 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 That long has lowered above the ruined world. _145

'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; That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, _150 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, And all is wonder to unpractised sense: _155 But, active, steadfast, 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; And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly _160 Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes Its undecaying battlement, presides, Apportioning with irresistible law The place each spring of its machine shall fill; So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap _165 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, All seems unlinked contingency and chance: _170 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, That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow _175 Fulfils its destined, though invisible work, The universal Spirit guides; nor less, When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, _180 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 Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, _185 Nor the events enchaining every will, That from the depths of unrecorded time Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee, Soul of the Universe! eternal spring _190 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, Whose chains and massy walls _195 We feel, but cannot see.

'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power, Necessity! thou mother of the world! Unlike the God of human error, thou Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice _200 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, And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, _205 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 A temple where the vows of happy love _210 Are registered, are equal in thy sight: No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge And favouritism, and worst desire of fame Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains Are but thy passive instruments, and thou _215 Regard'st 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.

'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time _220 Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes And broken altars of the almighty Fiend Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood Through centuries clotted there, has floated down The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live _225 Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee, Which, nor the tempest-breath of time, Nor the interminable flood, Over earth's slight pageant rolling, Availeth to destroy,--. _230 The sensitive extension of the world. That wondrous and eternal fane, Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, To do the will of strong necessity, And life, in multitudinous shapes, _235 Still pressing forward where no term can be, Like hungry and unresting flame Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.'

7.

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; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, _5 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; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob _10 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: Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, _15 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 In silent eloquence unfold its store _20 Of argument; infinity within, Infinity without, belie creation; The exterminable spirit it contains Is nature's only God; but human pride Is skilful to invent most serious names _25 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, Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, _30 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 Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise _35 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, Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, _40 Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven In honour of His name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, _45 Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth a slaughter-house!

'O Spirit! through the sense By which thy inner nature was apprised _50 Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled, And varied reminiscences have waked Tablets that never fade; All things have been imprinted there, The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, _55 Even the unshapeliest lineaments Of wild and fleeting visions Have left a record there To testify of earth.

'These are my empire, for to me is given _60 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 Of human error's dense and purblind faith, _65 I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. Ahasuerus, rise!'

A strange and woe-worn wight Arose beside the battlement, And stood unmoving there. _70 His inessential figure cast no shade Upon the golden floor; His port and mien bore mark of many years, And chronicles of untold ancientness Were legible within his beamless eye: _75 Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth; Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame; The wisdom of old age was mingled there With youth's primaeval dauntlessness; And inexpressible woe, _80 Chastened by fearless resignation, gave An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

SPIRIT: 'Is there a God?'

AHASUERUS: 'Is there a God!--ay, an almighty God, And vengeful as almighty! Once His voice _85 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 That dared to hurl defiance at His throne, _90 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 To elevated daring, to one deed _95 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 Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard _100 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. These were Jehovah's words:-- _105

'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 Planted the tree of evil, so that he _110 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 Chosen to My honour, with impunity _115 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, And make My name be dreaded through the land. _120 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 Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge _125 (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 Be endless? will long ages roll away, _130 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: I will beget a Son, and He shall bear _135 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 On whom My grace descends, those who are marked _140 As vessels to the honour 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, But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. _145 Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, Such as the nurses frighten babes withal: These in a gulf of anguish and of flame Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, _150 Even on their beds of torment, where they howl, My honour, and the justice of their doom. What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts Of purity, with radiant genius bright, Or lit with human reason's earthly ray? _155 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, I tremble and obey!' _160

'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 Of man, scorned by the world, His name unheard, _165 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 The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword _170 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 No pain assailed His unterrestrial sense; _175 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. A smile of godlike malice reillumed _180 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, And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. _185 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, And in their various attitudes of death _190 My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls Glared ghastily upon me. But my soul, From sight and sense of the polluting woe Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer Hell's freedom to the servitude of Heaven. _195 Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began My lonely and unending pilgrimage, Resolved to wage unweariable war With my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl Defiance at His impotence to harm _200 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. These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn _205 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 Their thirst for ruin in the very blood _210 That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless 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; And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood _215 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, Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, _220 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.

'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe _225 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 O'er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun _230 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. 'Spirit, no year of my eventful being _235 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 With murder, feign to stretch the other out _240 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, Reason may claim our gratitude, who now _245 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, Adds impotent eternities to pain, _250 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 Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, _255 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 Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand _260 A monument of fadeless ruin there; Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, As in the sunlight's calm it spreads Its worn and withered arms on high _265 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, That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, _270 Flee from the morning beam: The matter of which dreams are made Not more endowed with actual life Than this phantasmal portraiture Of wandering human thought. _275

NOTE: _180 reillumined edition 1813.

8.

THE FAIRY: '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, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, _5 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 Thy glorious destiny!' _10

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; Love, freedom, health, had given _15 Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, And all its pulses beat Symphonious to the planetary spheres: Then dulcet music swelled Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; _20 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 And dies on the creation of its breath, _25 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 With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. _30

Joy to the Spirit came,-- Such joy as when a lover sees The chosen of his soul in happiness, And witnesses her peace Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, _35 Sees her unfaded cheek Glow mantling in first luxury of health, Thrills with her lovely eyes, Which like two stars amid the heaving main Sparkle through liquid bliss. _40

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, And those events that desolate the earth _45 Have faded from the memory of Time, Who dares not give reality to that Whose being I annul. To me is given The wonders of the human world to keep, Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity _50 Exposes now its treasure; let the sight Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal Where virtue fixes universal peace, And midst the ebb and flow of human things, _55 Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves.

'The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, _60 Where matter dared not vegetate or live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls _65 Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves And melodize with man's blest nature there.

'Those deserts of immeasurable sand, _70 Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, _75 Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, _80 Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother's door, Sharing his morning's meal _85 With the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet.

'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen above the illimitable plain, Morning on night, and night on morning rise, _90 Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept _95 The desert of those ocean solitudes, But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds Of kindliest human impulses respond. _100 Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, _105 To meet the kisses of the flow'rets there.

'All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life: The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, _110 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness: The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad: Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: _115 No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, _120 Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.

'The lion now forgets to thirst for blood: There might you see him sporting in the sun _125 Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed, His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made His nature as the nature of a lamb. Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: _130 All bitterness is past; the cup of joy Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.

'But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know More misery, and dream more joy than all; _135 Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast To mingle with a loftier instinct there, Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each; Who stands amid the ever-varying world, _140 The burthen or the glory of the earth; He chief perceives the change, his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines Each movement of its progress on his mind.

'Man, where the gloom of the long polar night _145 Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, _150 Insensible to courage, truth, or love, His stunted stature and imbecile frame, Marked him for some abortion of the earth, Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: _155 His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled, Apprised him ever of the joyless length Which his short being's wretchedness had reached; His death a pang which famine, cold and toil _160 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought: All was inflicted here that Earth's revenge Could wreak on the infringers of her law; One curse alone was spared--the name of God. _165

'Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land _170 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was Man a nobler being; slavery Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust; Or he was bartered for the fame of power, Which all internal impulses destroying, _175 Makes human will an article of trade; Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, _180 Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads The long-protracted fulness of their woe; Or he was led to legal butchery, To turn to worms beneath that burning sun, Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, _185 And priests first traded with the name of God.

'Even where the milder zone afforded Man A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late _190 Availed to arrest its progress, or create That peace which first in bloodless victory waved Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime: There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, The mimic of surrounding misery, _195 The jackal of ambition's lion-rage, The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. 'Here now the human being stands adorning This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses, _200 Which gently in his noble bosom wake All kindly passions and all pure desires. Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise _205 In time-destroying infiniteness, gift With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks The unprevailing hoariness of age, And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene Swift as an unremembered vision, stands _210 Immortal upon earth: no longer now He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, And horribly devours his mangled flesh, Which, still avenging Nature's broken law, Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, _215 All evil passions, and all vain belief, Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. No longer now the winged habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,-- _220 Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: Man has lost _225 His terrible prerogative, and stands An equal amidst equals: happiness And science dawn though late upon the earth; Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, _230 Reason and passion cease to combat there; Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend Their all-subduing energies, and wield The sceptre of a vast dominion there; Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends _235 Its force to the omnipotence of mind, Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth To decorate its Paradise of peace.'

NOTES: _204 exhaustless store edition 1813. _205 Draws edition 1813. See Editor's Note.

9.

'O happy Earth! reality of Heaven! To which those restless souls that ceaselessly Throng through the human universe, aspire; Thou consummation of all mortal hope! Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! _5 Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time, Verge to one point and blend for ever there: Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place! Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: _10 O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams, And dim forebodings of thy loveliness Haunting the human heart, have there entwined Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss _15 Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. Thou art the end of all desire and will, The product of all action; and the souls That by the paths of an aspiring change Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, _20 There rest from the eternity of toil That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

'Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear; That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, So long had ruled the world, that nations fell _25 Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, That for millenniums had withstood the tide Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand Across that desert where their stones survived The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. _30 Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, Was but the mushroom of a summer day, That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust: Time was the king of earth: all things gave way Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, _35 The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.

'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love; Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene, Till from its native Heaven they rolled away: _40 First, Crime triumphant o'er all hope careered Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong; Whilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue's attributes, Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, Till done by her own venomous sting to death, _45 She left the moral world without a law, No longer fettering Passion's fearless wing,-- Nor searing Reason with the brand of God. Then steadily the happy ferment worked; Reason was free; and wild though Passion went _50 Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads, Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers, Yet like the bee returning to her queen, She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, _55 No longer trembling at the broken rod.

'Mild was the slow necessity of death: The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, Calm as a voyager to some distant land, _60 And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease Died in the human frame, and Purity Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers. How vigorous then the athletic form of age! _65 How clear its open and unwrinkled brow! Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, Had stamped the seal of gray deformity On all the mingling lineaments of time. How lovely the intrepid front of youth! _70 Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;-- Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, And elevated will, that journeyed on Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. _75

'Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom's self, And rivets with sensation's softest tie The kindred sympathies of human souls, Needed no fetters of tyrannic law: Those delicate and timid impulses _80 In Nature's primal modesty arose, And with undoubted confidence disclosed The growing longings of its dawning love, Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, _85 Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. No longer prostitution's venomed bane Poisoned the springs of happiness and life; Woman and man, in confidence and love, Equal and free and pure together trod _90 The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

'Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked Famine's faint groan, and Penury's silent tear, _95 A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw Year after year their stones upon the field, Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook _100 In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind's ear. 'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung: It were a sight of awfulness to see _105 The works of faith and slavery, so vast, So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal! Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death To-day, the breathing marble glows above _110 To decorate its memory, and tongues Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children played, _115 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wallflower, That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, There rusted amid heaps of broken stone _120 That mingled slowly with their native earth: There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean Captivity With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: _125 No more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment were resonant around.

'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: _130 Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, To happier shapes were moulded, and became Ministrant to all blissful impulses: Thus human things were perfected, and earth, Even as a child beneath its mother's love, _135 Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done: _140 Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, With all the fear and all the hope they bring. My spells are passed: the present now recurs. Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. _145

'Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue The gradual paths of an aspiring change: For birth and life and death, and that strange state Before the naked soul has found its home, _150 All tend to perfect happiness, and urge The restless wheels of being on their way, Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal: For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense _155 Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape New modes of passion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there That variegate the eternal universe; _160 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, _165 Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet Spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. _170

'Fear not then, Spirit, Death's disrobing hand, So welcome when the tyrant is awake, So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns; 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. _175 Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, Mingling with Freedom's fadeless laurels there, And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene _180 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed? Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led, Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death? And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, _185 Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, Whose iron thongs are red with human gore? Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will Is destined an eternal war to wage _190 With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot The germs of misery from the human heart. Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, _195 Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, _200 Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon Which thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep _205 Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, And many days of beaming hope shall bless Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch _210 Light, life and rapture from thy smile.'

The Fairy waves her wand of charm. Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That rolled beside the battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankful ness. _215 Again the enchanted steeds were yoked, Again the burning wheels inflame The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way. Fast and far the chariot flew: The vast and fiery globes that rolled _220 Around the Fairy's palace-gate Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs That there attendant on the solar power With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. _225