Chapter VIII

There is no Heaven, there is no Hell;
these be the dreams of baby minds;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,
to fright the fools his cunning blinds.

Learn from the mighty Spirits of old
to set thy foot on Heaven and Hell;
In Life to find thy hell and heaven
as thou abuse or use it well.

So deemed the doughty Jew who dared
by studied silence low to lay
Orcus and Hades, lands of shades,
the gloomy night of human day.

Hard to the heart is final death:
fain would an Ens not end in Nil;
Love made the sentiment kindly good:
the Priest perverted all to ill.

While Reason sternly bids us die,
Love longs for life beyond the grave:
Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears
for Life-to-be shall ever crave.

Hence came the despots darling dream,
a Church to rule and sway the State;
Hence sprang the train of countless griefs
in priestly sway and rule innate.

For future Life who dares reply?
No witness at the bar have we;
Save what the brother Potsherd tells,
old tales and novel jugglery.

Who eer returnd to teach the Truth,
the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?
And all we hear is only fit
for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.

Have mercy, man! the Zâhid cries,
of our best visions rob us not!
Mankind a future life must have
to balance lifes unequal lot.

Nay, quoth the Magian, tis not so;
I draw my wine for one and all,
A cup for this, a score for that,
een as his measures great or small:

Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;
to poorest passion he was born;
Who drains the score must eer expect
to rue the headache of the morn.

Safely he jogs along the way
which Golden Mean the sages call;
Who scales the brow of frowning Alp
must face full many a slip and fall.

Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings
whose crownèd heads uneasy lie,
Whose cup of joy contains no more
than tramps that on the dunghill die.

To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred
for dangling from the gallows-tree;
To Saint who spends his holy days
in rapturous hope his God to see;

To all that breathe our upper air
the hands of Destiny ever deal,
In fixed and equal parts, their shares
of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.

How comes it, then, our span of days
in hunting wealth and fame we spend
Why strive we (and all humans strive)
for vain and visionary end?

Reply: mankind obeys a law
that bids him labour, struggle, strain;
The Sage well knowing its unworth,
the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.

And who, mid een the Fools, but feels
that half the joy is in the race
For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs
when comes success to crown the chase?

Again: in Hind, Chîn, Franguestân
that accident of birth befell,
Without our choice, our will, our voice:
Faith is an accident as well.

What to the Hindu saith the Frank:
Denier of the Laws divine!
However godly-good thy Life,
Hell is the home for thee and thine.

Go strain the draught before tis drunk,
and learn that breathing every breath,
With every step, with every gest,
something of life thou doest to death.

Replies the Hindu: Wend thy way
for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit;
Your Pariah-paradise woo and win;
at such dog-Heaven I laugh and spit.

Cannibals of the Holy Cow!
who make your ravening maws the grave
Of Things with self-same right to live;
what Fiend the filthy license gave?

What to the Moslem cries the Frank?
A polygamic Theist thou!
From an imposter-Prophet turn;
Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.

Rejoins the Moslem: Allahs one
tho with four Moslemahs I wive,
One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!)
you split your God to Three and Five.

The Buddhist to Confucians thus:
Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die;
Content ye rest with wretched earth;
God, Judgment, Hell ye fain defy.

Retorts the Tartar: Shall I lend
mine only ready-money now,
For vain usurious Then like thine,
avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!

With this poor life, with this mean world
I fain complete what in me lies;
I strive to perfect this my me;
my sole ambitions to be wise.

When doctors differ who decides
amid the milliard-headed throng?
Who save the madman dares to cry:
Tis I am right, you all are wrong?

You all are right, you all are wrong,
we hear the careless Soofi say,
For each believes his glimmering lamp
to be the gorgeous light of day.

Thy faith why false, my faith why true?
tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
The fond and foolish love of self
that makes the Mine excel the Thine.

Cease then to mumble rotten bones;
and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skeleton; and to shape a Form
that all shall hail as fair and good.

For generous youth, an Arab saith,
Jahims* the only genial state;
Give us the fire but not the shame
with the sad, sorry blest to mate.

* Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.

And if your Heaven and Hell be true,
and Fate that forced me to be born
Force me to Heaven or HellI go,
and hold Fates insolence in scorn.

I want not this, I want not that,
already sick of Me and Thee;
And if were both transformd and changed,
what then becomes of Thee and Me?

Enough to think such things may be:
to say they are not or they are
Were folly: leave them all to Fate,
nor wage on shadows useless war.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death,
a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,
a tinkling of the camel-bell.