I was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burn'd. She took me there: The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit pass'd with dauntless mien, Temper'd disdain in his unaltering eye, Mix'd with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth: The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorch'd to blindness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob Utter'd a cry of triumph, and I wept.
Weep not, child! cried my mother, for that man Has said, There is no God. (13.)
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan seal'd: Let 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 In silent eloquence unfold its store Of argument: infinity within, Infinity without, belie creation; The interminable spirit it contains
Is nature's only God; but human pride Is 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, Seeva, 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 watch-word; whether hosts Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on Triumphantly 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, Unarm'd old age, and youth, and infancy, Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
In honor of his name; or last and worst,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Have left a record there
To testify of earth.
These are my empire, for to me is given The wonders of the human world to keep, And fancy's thin creations to endow With matter, being, and reality;
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams Of human error's dense and purblind faith, I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. Ahasuerus, rise! (14)
A strange and woe-worn wight Arose beside the battlement, 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 Were 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 primeval dauntlessness; And inexpressible woe, Chasten'd by fearless resignation, gave An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
Is there a God!-ay, an almighty God, And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice Was heard on earth: earth shudder'd at the sound, The fiery-visaged firmament express'd Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn'd To swallow all the dauntless and the good That 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 To 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 pæans rung Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts Had raised him to his eminence in power Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, And confidant of the all-knowing one.
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 apprized Of outward shows, vague dreams have roll'd, And varied reminiscences have waked Tablets that never fade;
All things have been imprinted there, The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, Even the unshapeliest lineaments
Of wild and fleeting visions
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 Planted 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 Chosen 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 harden'd feet, their conquering troops Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood, And 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 Shall perish to fulfil the blind revenge (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.
Is there no mercy? must our punishment Be 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 : I will beget a son, and he shall bear The sins of all the world; (15) 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 mark'd 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 Savior's name, But, unredeem'd, go to the gaping grave. 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, 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, Or lit with human reason's earthly ray? Many are call'd, but few will I elect. Do thou my bidding, Moses!
Even the murderer's cheek Was blanch'd with horror, and his quivering lips Scarce faintly utter'd-O almighty one, I 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 Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard, Save by the rabble of his native town, Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The massacres and miseries which his name Had sanction'd in my country, and I cried, Go! go! in mockery.
A 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, And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. When I awoke, hell burn'd within my brain, Which stagger'd 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 My murder'd children's mute and eyeless skulls Glared ghastily upon me.
From sight and sense of the polluting woe Of tyranny, had long learn'd to prefer Hell'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 Defiance at his impotence to harm
Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand That barr'd my passage to the peaceful grave Has crush'd the earth to misery, and given Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn Of weak, unstable and precarious power; Then preaching peace, as now they practise war, So when they turn'd but from the massacre Of unoffending infidels, to quench Their thirst for ruin in the very blood That flow'd 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 Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace, Pointed 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-extinguish'd pile.
Yes! 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-omen'd cross O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace, Of safe assassination, and all crime In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest 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 No pain assail'd his unterrestrial sense; And yet he groan'd. Indignantly I summ'd
Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord. And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. Spirit! no year of my eventful being Has pass'd unstain'd by crime and misery, Which flows from God's own faith. I've mark'd
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red
With murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they now Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds Are mark'd with all the narrowness and crime That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise, Reason 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, Adds impotent eternities to pain,
Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast To see the smiles of peace around them play, Tc frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
Thus have I stood,-through a wild waste of years Struggling 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 Had 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 sunlight's calm it spreads Its worn and wither'd 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, That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, Flee from the morning beam:
The matter of which dreams are made Not more endow'd with actual life Than this phantasmal portraiture Of wandering human thought.
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, And from the cradles of eternity,
Where millions lie lull'd to their portion'd sleep By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, Tear thou that gloomy shroud.-Spirit, behold Thy glorious destiny!
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 Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, And all its pulses beat Symphonious to the planetary spheres: Then dulcet music swell'd Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; It throbb'd 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,
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 flow'd.
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, 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.
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 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 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, Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves. The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurl'd By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 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 Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is waken'd into echoings sweet To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves, And melodize with man's blest nature there.
Those deserts of immeasurable sand, Whose age-collected fervors scarce allow'd 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, Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stain'd in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 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 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, Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept 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. 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 laborer leaps to shore, To meet the kisses of the flowerets 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, 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: 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, 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 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: 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; 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, 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 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,
His chill'd and narrow energies, his heart, Insensible to courage, truth, or love, His stunted stature and imbecile frame, Mark'd him for some abortion of the earth, Fit compeer of the bears that roam'd around, Whose habits and enjoyments were his own His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, Whose meager wants, but scantily fulfill'd, Apprized him ever of the joyless length Which his short being's wretchedness had reach'd, His death a pang which famine, cold and toil, 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
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 Scatter'd the seeds of pestilence, and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land
Teem'd with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was man a nobler being; slavery
Had crush'd him to his country's blood-stain'd dust; Or he was barter'd for the fame of power, Which, all internal impulses destroying, Makes human will an article of trade;
Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, And dragg'd to distant isles, where to the sound Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads The long-protracted fullness 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 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 unnumber'd ills. Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late Avail'd to arrest its progress, or create That peace which first in bloodless victory waved Her snowy standard o'er this favor'd clime: There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, The mimic of surrounding misery, 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. Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, 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 Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, (16) that mocks The unprevailing hoariness of age,
And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene Swift as an unremember'd vision, stands Immortal upon earth: no longer now
Shrank with the plants, and darken'd with the night; He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, (17
And horribly devours his mangled flesh, Which, still avenging nature's broken law, Kindled all putrid humors in his frame, All evil passions, and all vain belief, Hatred, despair, and lothing 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, 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 dreamless partners of their play. All things are void of terror: man has lost 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, Reason and passion cease to combat there; Whilst each unfetter'd 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 Its force to the omnipotence of mind, Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth To decorate its paradise of peace.
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! 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 : 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, 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 reach'd thy haven of perpetual peace, 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 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 heap'd them there. Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, Was but the mushroom of a summer day, That his light-winged footstep press'd to dust: Time was the king of earth: all things gave way Before him, but the fix'd and virtuous will,
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, That mock'd his fury and prepared his fall.
Yet slow and gradual dawn'd the morn of love, Long lay the clouds and darkness o'er the scene, Till from its native heaven they roll'd away: First, crime triumphant o'er all hope career'd Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong; Whilst falsehood, trick'd in virtue's attributes, Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe. Till done by her own venomous sting to death, 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 work'd ; Reason was free; and wild though passion went Through tangled glens and wood-embosom'd 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 kiss'd the sportive child, No longer trembling at the broken rod.
Mild was the slow necessity of death: The tranquil Spirit fail'd beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, Calm as a voyager to some distant land, And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease Died in the human frame, and purity Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers How vigorous then the athletic form of age! How clear its open and unwrinkled brow! Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, Had stamp'd the seal of gray deformity On all the mingling lineaments of time. How lovely the intrepid front of youth! Which meek-eyed courage deck'd with freshest grace; Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, And elevated will, that journey'd on Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand.
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 In nature's primal modesty arose,
And with undoubting confidence disclosed The growing longings of its dawning love, Uncheck'd by dull and selfish chastity, That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. No longer prostitution's venom'd bane Poison'd the springs of happiness and life Woman and man, in confidence and love, Equal and free and pure, together trod
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more Were stain'd with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.
Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride The palace of the monarch-slave had mock'd Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw Year after year their stones upon the field,
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