Inebriate with rage:_loud, and more loud Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,
The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts
And o’er the conqueror and the conquer'd draws His baby-sword even in a hero's mood.
His cold and bloody shroud.—Of all the men This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge
Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names
In proud and vigorous health ; of all the hearts Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,
That beat with anxious life at sun-set there ; Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims
How few survive, how few are beating now !

ht reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword All is deep silence, like the fearful calm

Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.
That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man
Save when the frantic wail of widowed love Inherits vice and misery, when force
Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,
With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
Wrapt round its struggling powers.

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

grey morn
Dawns on the mournful scene ; the sulphurous For happiness and sympathy, how stern

From its new tenement, and looks abroad Before the icy wind slow rolls away, [smoke

And desolate a tract is this wide world ! And the bright beams of frosty morning dance

How withered all the buds of natural good ! Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood

No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms
Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,

Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame,
And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments
Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful Heaped on the wretched parent, whence it sprung,

Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe
Of the outsallying victors : far behind, [path

By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds
Black ashes note where their proud city stood.
Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-

Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,
Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, May visit not its longings. It is bound

May breathe not. The untainting light of day Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

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

I see thee shrink, Long ere its being : all liberty and love
Surpassing Spirit!—wert thou human else? And peace is torn from its defencelessness;
I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet

Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed
Across thy stainless features : yet fear not ; To abjectness and bondage !
This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.

Throughout this varied and eternal world
Man's evil nature, that apology

Soul is the only element, the block
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, That for uncounted ages has remained.

The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Is active living spirit. Every grain
Which desolates the discord-wasted land

Is sentient both in unity and part,
From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose,

And the minutest atom comprehends
Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, A world of loves and hatreds ; these beget
Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;
Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs
And where its venomed exhalations spread Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,
Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay That variegate the eternal universe.
Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Soul is not more polluted than the beams
Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,

Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines
A garden shall arise, in loveliness

The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.
Surpassing fabled Eden.
Hath Nature's soul,

Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread

Of high resolve ; on fancy's boldest wing

To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn Earth’s lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord

The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave

The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep

To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,

To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame
And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust

Of natural love in sensualism, to know
With spirit, thought, and love ; on Man alone
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly

That hour as blest when on his worthless days

The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery ; his soul

Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar

The one is man that shall hereafter be;
The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp,

The other, man as vice has made him now,
But serving on the frightful gulf to glare,
Rent wide beneath his footsteps ?

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

Nature Ino! The lawyer's jest, the lired assassin's trade,
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower, And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones
Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
Of desolate society. The child,

Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround

set up

Their palaces, participate the crimes

With whom thy master was :-or thou delight'st That force defends, and from a nation's rage In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, Secure the crown, which all the curses reach All misery weighing nothing in the scale That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe. Against thy short-lived fame : or thou dost load These are the hired bravoes who defend

With cowardice and crime the groaning land, The tyrant's throne—the bullies of his fear : A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er The refuge of society, the dregs

Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend Days of unsatisfying listlessness? Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, All that is mean and villanous, with rage

When will the morning come? Is not thy youth Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, A vain and feverish dream of sensualism? Alone might kindle ; they are decked in wealth, Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease ? Honour and power, then are sent abroad

Are not thy views of unregretted death To do their work. The pestilence that stalks Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind, In gloomy triumph through some Eastern land Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, Incapable of judgment, hope, or love ? And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth And dost thou wish the errors to survive Already crushed with servitude : he knows That bar thee from all sympathies of good, His wretchedness too late, and cherishes

After the miserable interest Repentance for his ruin, when his doom

Thou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave Is sealed in gold and blood !

Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, Those too the tyrant serve, who skilled to snare Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth The feet of justice in the toils of law,

To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still ;

Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,
And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold, That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die ?
Sneering at public virtue, which beneath
Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where
Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.

V.
Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites, Thus do the generations of the earth
Without a hope, a passion, or a love,

Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,
Who, through a life of luxury and lies,

Surviving still the imperishable change Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, That renovates the world ; even as the leaves Support the system whence their honours flow Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year They have three words; well tyrants know their use, Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped Well

pay them for the loan, with usury (Heaven. For many seasons there, though long they choke, Torn from a bleeding world !—God, Hell and Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,

All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage

From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.

Lie level with the earth to moulder there, Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

They fertilize the land they long deformed, Where poisonous and undying worms prolong Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs Eternal misery to those hapless slaves

Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, Whose life has been a penance for its crimes. Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights Thcir human nature, quake, believe, and cringe The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Before the mockeries of earthly power.

Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil

Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war Wields in his wrath, and as he wills, destroys, With passion's unsubduable array. Omnipotent in wickedness : the while

Twin-sister of religion, selfishness ! Youth springs,age moulders, manhood tamely does Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend The wanton horrors of her bloody play ; Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,

Shunning the light, and owning not its name :
They rise, they fall; one generation comes Compelled, by its deformity, to screen
Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe. With flimsy veil of justice and of right,
It fades, another blossoms : yet behold !

Its unattractive lineaments, that scare
Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, All, save the brood of ignorance : at once
Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. The cause and the effect of tyranny ;
He has invented lying words and modes,

Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; Empty and vain as his own coreless heart ; Dead to all love but of its abjectness, Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, With heart impassive by more noble powers To lure the heedless victim to the toils

Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame ; Spread round the valley of its paradise.

Despising its own miserable being,

Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall. Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince ! Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,

Of all that human art or nature yield ;

Which wealth should purchase not, but want And bare fulfilment of the common laws
And natural kindness hasten to supply [demand, Of decency and prejudice, confines
From the full fountain of its boundless love, The struggling nature of his human heart,
For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. Is duped by their cold sophistry ; he sheds
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
No solitary virtue dares to spring ;

Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door But poverty and wealth with equal hand

The frightful waves are driven,—when his son Scatter their withering curses, and unfold

Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion The doors of premature and violent death, Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, To pining famine and full-fed disease,

Whose life is misery, and fear, and care; To all that shares the lot of human life, [chain Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream, That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze

For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene The signet of its all-enslaving power,

Of thousands like himself ; he little heeds Upon a shining ore, and called it gold :

The rhetoric of tyranny, his hate Before whose image bow the vulgar great, Is quenchless as his wrongs, he laughs to scorn The vainly rich, the miserable proud,

The vain and bitter mockery of words, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, And with blind feelings reverence the power

And unrestrained but by the arm of power,
That grinds them to the dust of misery.

That knows and dreads his enmity.
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn

The iron rod of penury still compels
All earthly things but virtue.

Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,

And poison, with unprofitable toil,
Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,

A life too void of solace to confirm
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame The very chains that bind him to his doom.
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,

Nature, impartial in munificence,
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world Has gifted man with all-subduing will:
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.

Matter, with all its transitory shapes, His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes

Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, The despot numbers ; from his cabinet

That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Even as the slaves by force or famine driven Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, Beneath a vulgar master, to perform

In unremitting drudgery and care ! A task of cold and brutal drudgery ;

How many a vulgar Cato has compelled Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,

His energies, no longer tameless then,
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,

To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail !
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, How many a Newton, to whose passive ken
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth! Those mighty spheres that gem infinity

Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven
The harmony and happiness of man

To light the midnights of his native town!
Yield to the wealth of nations ; that which lifts
His nature to the heaven of its pride,

Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : Is bartered for the poison of his soul;

The wisest of the sages of the earth,
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, That ever from the stores of reason drew
Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,

Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, Withering all passion but of slavish fear,

Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, Extinguishing all free and generous love

Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse

With pure desire and universal love, That fancy kindles in the beating heart

Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, To mingle with sensation, it destroys,

Untainted passion, elevated will, Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,

Which death (who even would linger long in awe The grovelling hope of interest and gold,

Within his noble presence, and beneath Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed

His changeless eye-beam), might alone subdue. Even by hypocrisy.

Him, every slave now dragging through the filth

Of some corrupted city his sad life,
And statesmen boast

Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,
Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild

With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, The bitter poison of a nation's woe,

Or madly rushing through all violent crime, Can turn the worship of the servile mob

To move the deep stagnation of his soul,-
To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,

Might imitate and equal.
From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised

But mean lust
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,

Has bound its chains so tight about the earth, With desolated dwellings smoking round.

That all within it but the virtuous man The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach To deeds of charitable intercourse

The price prefixed by selfishness, to all

But him of resolute and unchanging will ;

How vainly seek Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, The selfish for that happiness denied Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,

To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they Can bribe to yield his elevated soul

Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield Who covet power they know not how to use, With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give :

Madly they frustrate still their own designs; All things are sold: the very light of heaven

And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,

Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, The smallest and most despicable things

Pining regrets, and vain repentances, That lurk in the abysses of the deep,

Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade
All objects of our life, even life itself,

Their valueless and miserable lives.
And the poor pittance which the laws allow
Of liberty, the fellowship of man,

But hoary-headed selfishness has felt
Those duties which his heart of human love Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:
Should urge him to perform instinctively,

A brighter morn awaits the human day, Are bought and sold as in a public mart

When every transfer of earth's natural gifts Of undisguising selfishness, that sets

Shall be a commerce of good words and works; On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

The fear of infamy, disease and woe, Is turned to deadliest agony, old age

War with its million horrors, and fierce hell, Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,

Shall live but in the memory of time, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare

Who, like a penitent libertine shall start, A life of horror from the blighting bane

Look back, and shudder at his younger years. Of commerce: whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled All human life with hydra-headed woes.

VI. Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs

All touch, all eye, all ear, Of outraged conscience ; for the slavish priest

The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. Sets no great value on his hireling faith:

O'er the thin texture of its frame, A little passing pomp, some servile souls,

The varying periods painted, changing glows; Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,

As on a summer even, Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe

When soul-enfolding music floats around, To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,

The stainless mirror of the lake Can make him minister to tyranny.

Re-images the eastern gloom,
More daring crime requires a loftier meed : Mingling convulsively its purple hues
Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends

With sunset's burnished gold.
His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,
When the dread eloquence of dying men,

Then thus the Spirit spoke :

It is a wild and miserable world!
Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,
Assails that nature whose applause he sells

Thorny, and full of care,
For the gross blessings of the patriot mob,

Which every fiend can make his prey at will. For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,

O Fairy! in the lapse of years, And for a cold world's good word,—viler still !

Is there no hope in store ?

Will yon vast suns roll on There is a nobler glory which survives

Interminably, still illuming Until our being fades, and, solacing

The night of so many wretched souls, All human care, accompanies its change ;

And see no hope for them?
Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,

Will not the universal Spirit e'er
And, in the precincts of the palace, guides Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?
Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ;
Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,

The Fairy calmly smiled
Even when, from power's avenging hand, he takes In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope
Its sweetest, last and noblest title-death;

Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.
- The consciousness of good, which neither gold, Oh ! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts,
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul,
Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,

That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. Unalterable will, quenchless desire

Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth, Of universal happiness, the heart

Falsehood, mistake, and lust; That beats with it in unison, the brain,

But the eternal world Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change

Contains at once the evil and the cure. Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.

Some eminent in virtue shall start up,

Even in perversest time: This commerce of sincerest virtue needs

The truths of their pure lips, that never die, No mediative signs of selfishness,

Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,

Of ever-living flame,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; Until the monster sting itself to death.
In just and equal measure all is weighed,
One scale contains the sum of human weal,

How sweet a scene will earth become!
And one, the good man's heart.

Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place,

Symphonious with the planetary spheres ;

Of fate, whom he created in his sport,
When man, with changeless nature coalescing, To triumph in their torments when they fell !
Will undertake regeneration's work,

Earth heard the name ; earth trembled, as the smoke
When its ungenial poles no longer point

Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,
To the red and baleful sun

Blotting the constellations, and the cries
That faintly twinkles there.

Of millions butcher'd in sweet confidence

And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
Spirit, on yonder earth,

Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land ;
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth !

Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn
Madness and misery are there!

spear,
The happiest is most wretched ! Yet confide And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy Of maniac gladness as the sacred steel
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.

Felt cold in her torn entrails !
Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,
And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, Religion ! thou wert then in manhood's prime:
Which nature soon, with re-creating hand, But age crept on: one God would not suffice
Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. For senile puerility; thou framedst
How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
How calm and sweet the victories of life,

Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford
How terrorless the triumph of the grave! A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,
Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! That still consumed thy being, even when (light
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! Thou heardst the step of fate;—that flames might
The weight of his exterminating curse

Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks
How light ! and his affected charity,

Of parents dying on the pile that burn'd
To suit the pressure of the changing times, To light their children to thy paths, the roar
What palpable deceit !--but for thy aid,

Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,

Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,

Might sate thy hungry ear And heaven with slaves !

Even on the bed of death !

Thou taintest all thou look’st upon!—the stars, But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs;
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness

Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,

Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon That long has lowered above the ruined world.
Her worshipper. Then thou becamest a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies : every shape, Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
Which from sensation's relics, fancy culls; A spirit of activity and life,
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, That knows no term, cessation, or decay ;
The genii of the elements, the powers

That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
That give a shape to nature's varied works, Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief

Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands In the dim newness of its being feels
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave The impulses of sublunary things,
Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain; And all is wonder to unpractised sense:
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride: Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Their everlasting and unchanging laws

Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Reproached thine ignorance. A while thou stoodst Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
Battled and gloomy ; then thou didst sum up And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
The elements of all that thou didst know;

Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes
The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, Its undecaying battlement, presides,
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, Apportioning with irresistible law
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,

The place each spring of its machine shall fill ;
The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon,

So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
And all their causes, to an abstract point

Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean
Converging, thou didst bend, and call'd it God! Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, (fords,
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,

Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, The merciful, and the avenging God !

All seems unlinked contingency and chance :
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits

No atom of this turbulence fulfils
High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, A vague and unnecessitated task,
Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work, Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves Even the minutest molecule of light,