‘Throughout this varied and eternal worldSoul is the only element: the block _140That for uncounted ages has remainedThe moveless pillar of a mountain’s weightIs active, living spirit. Every grainIs sentient both in unity and part,And the minutest atom comprehends _145A world of loves and hatreds; these begetEvil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;Hence will and thought and action, all the germsOf pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,That variegate the eternal universe. _150Soul is not more polluted than the beamsOf Heaven’s pure orb, ere round their rapid linesThe taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.
‘Man is of soul and body, formed for deedsOf high resolve, on fancy’s boldest wing _155To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turnThe keenest pangs to peacefulness, and tasteThe joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, _160To shrink at every sound, to quench the flameOf natural love in sensualism, to knowThat hour as blessed when on his worthless daysThe frozen hand of Death shall set its seal,Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. _165The one is man that shall hereafter be;The other, man as vice has made him now.
‘War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight,The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade,And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones _170Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surroundTheir palaces, participate the crimesThat force defends, and from a nation’s rage _175Secure the crown, which all the curses reachThat famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.These are the hired bravos who defendThe tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear:These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, _180The refuse of society, the dregsOf all that is most vile: their cold hearts blendDeceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,All that is mean and villanous, with rageWhich hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, _185Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,Honour and power, then are sent abroadTo do their work. The pestilence that stalksIn gloomy triumph through some eastern landIs less destroying. They cajole with gold, _190And promises of fame, the thoughtless youthAlready crushed with servitude: he knowsHis wretchedness too late, and cherishesRepentance for his ruin, when his doomIs sealed in gold and blood! _195Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snareThe feet of Justice in the toils of law,Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still;And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,Sneering at public virtue, which beneath _200Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, whereHonour sits smiling at the sale of truth.
‘Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,Without a hope, a passion, or a love,Who, through a life of luxury and lies, _205Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,Support the system whence their honours flow…They have three words:—well tyrants know their use,Well pay them for the loan, with usuryTorn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell, and Heaven. _210A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,Whose mercy is a nickname for the rageOf tameless tigers hungering for blood.Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,Where poisonous and undying worms prolong _215Eternal misery to those hapless slavesWhose life has been a penance for its crimes.And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belieTheir human nature, quake, believe, and cringeBefore the mockeries of earthly power. _220
‘These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,Omnipotent in wickedness: the whileYouth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely doesHis bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend _225Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.
‘They rise, they fall; one generation comesYielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe.It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!Red glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom, _230Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.He has invented lying words and modes,Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,To lure the heedless victim to the toils _235Spread round the valley of its paradise.
‘Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lustsDeep wallow in the earnings of the poor,With whom thy Master was:—or thou delight’st _240In numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain,All misery weighing nothing in the scaleAgainst thy short-lived fame: or thou dost loadWith cowardice and crime the groaning land,A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! _245Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e’erCrawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy daysDays of unsatisfying listlessness?Dost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is o’er,“When will the morning come?” Is not thy youth _250A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?Are not thy views of unregretted deathDrear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, _255Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?And dost thou wish the errors to surviveThat bar thee from all sympathies of good,After the miserable interestThou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave _260Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earthTo twine its roots around thy coffined clay,Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? _265
NOTE: _176 Secures edition 1813.
5.
‘Thus do the generations of the earthGo to the grave, and issue from the womb,Surviving still the imperishable changeThat renovates the world; even as the leavesWhich the keen frost-wind of the waning year _5Has scattered on the forest soil, and heapedFor many seasons there—though long they choke,Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,All germs of promise, yet when the tall treesFrom which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, _10Lie level with the earth to moulder there,They fertilize the land they long deformed,Till from the breathing lawn a forest springsOf youth, integrity, and loveliness,Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. _15Thus suicidal selfishness, that blightsThe fairest feelings of the opening heart,Is destined to decay, whilst from the soilShall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,And judgement cease to wage unnatural war _20With passion’s unsubduable array.Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!Rival in crime and falsehood, aping allThe wanton horrors of her bloody play;Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, _25Shunning 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 scareAll, save the brood of ignorance: at once _30The 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 powersThan unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; _35Despising its own miserable being,Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.
‘Hence commerce springs, the venal interchangeOf all that human art or nature yield;Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, _40And natural kindness hasten to supplyFrom the full fountain of its boundless love,For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shadeNo solitary virtue dares to spring, _45But Poverty and Wealth with equal handScatter their withering curses, and unfoldThe doors of premature and violent death,To pining famine and full-fed disease,To all that shares the lot of human life, _50Which 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 powerUpon a shining ore, and called it gold: _55Before 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 powerThat grinds them to the dust of misery. _60But in the temple of their hireling heartsGold is a living god, and rules in scornAll earthly things but virtue.
‘Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame _65To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,Success has sanctioned to a credulous worldThe ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.His hosts of blind and unresisting dupesThe despot numbers; from his cabinet _70These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,Beneath a vulgar master, to performA task of cold and brutal drudgery;—Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, _75Scarce 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 manYields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts _80His 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, _85Extinguishing all free and generous loveOf enterprise and daring, even the pulseThat fancy kindles in the beating heartTo mingle with sensation, it destroys,—Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, _90The grovelling hope of interest and gold,Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemedEven by hypocrisy.And statesmen boastOf wealth! The wordy eloquence, that livesAfter the ruin of their hearts, can gild _95The bitter poison of a nation’s woe,Can turn the worship of the servile mobTo their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,Although its dazzling pedestal be raised _100Amid 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 _105Of decency and prejudice, confinesThe struggling nature of his human heart,Is duped by their cold sophistry; he shedsA passing tear perchance upon the wreckOf earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door _110The frightful waves are driven,—when his sonIs murdered by the tyrant, or religionDrives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,Whose life is misery, and fear, and care;Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; _115Who ever hears his famished offspring’s scream,Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gazeFor ever meets, and the proud rich man’s eyeFlashing command, and the heart-breaking sceneOf thousands like himself;—he little heeds _120The rhetoric of tyranny; his hateIs quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scornThe vain and bitter mockery of words,Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds,And unrestrained but by the arm of power, _125That knows and dreads his enmity.
‘The iron rod of Penury still compelsHer wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,And poison, with unprofitable toil,A life too void of solace to confirm _130The 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, _135That, 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 _140His energies, no longer tameless then,To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!How many a Newton, to whose passive kenThose mighty spheres that gem infinityWere only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven _145To 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 drewScience and truth, and virtue’s dreadless tone, _150Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbuedWith pure desire and universal love,Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,Untainted passion, elevated will, _155Which Death (who even would linger long in aweWithin his noble presence, and beneathHis changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.Him, every slave now dragging through the filthOf some corrupted city his sad life, _160Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,Blunting the keenness of his spiritual senseWith narrow schemings and unworthy cares,Or madly rushing through all violent crime,To move the deep stagnation of his soul,— _165Might imitate and equal.But mean lustHas bound its chains so tight around the earth,That all within it but the virtuous manIs venal: gold or fame will surely reachThe price prefixed by selfishness, to all _170But 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 soulTo Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield _175With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.
‘All things are sold: the very light of HeavenIs venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,The smallest and most despicable thingsThat lurk in the abysses of the deep, _180All objects of our life, even life itself,And the poor pittance which the laws allowOf liberty, the fellowship of man,Those duties which his heart of human loveShould urge him to perform instinctively, _185Are bought and sold as in a public martOf undisguising selfishness, that setsOn each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.Even love is sold; the solace of all woeIs turned to deadliest agony, old age _190Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms,And youth’s corrupted impulses prepareA life of horror from the blighting baneOf commerce; whilst the pestilence that springsFrom unenjoying sensualism, has filled _195All human life with hydra-headed woes.
‘Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangsOf outraged conscience; for the slavish priestSets no great value on his hireling faith:A little passing pomp, some servile souls, _200Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,Or the spare mite of avarice could bribeTo deck the triumph of their languid zeal,Can make him minister to tyranny.More daring crime requires a loftier meed: _205Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lendsHis 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 _210For 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 survivesUntil our being fades, and, solacing _215All human care, accompanies its change;Deserts not virtue in the dungeon’s gloom,And, in the precincts of the palace, guidesIts footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, _220Even when, from Power’s avenging hand, he takesIts sweetest, last and noblest title—death;—The consciousness of good, which neither gold,Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly blissCan purchase; but a life of resolute good,— _225Unalterable will, quenchless desireOf universal happiness, the heartThat beats with it in unison, the brain,Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to changeReason’s rich stores for its eternal weal. _230
‘This commerce of sincerest virtue needsNo 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, _235One scale contains the sum of human weal,And one, the good man’s heart.How vainly seekThe selfish for that happiness deniedTo aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, _240Who 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 enjoyWhich virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, _245Pining regrets, and vain repentances,Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervadeTheir valueless and miserable lives.
‘But hoary-headed Selfishness has feltIts death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: _250A brighter morn awaits the human day,When every transfer of earth’s natural giftsShall be a commerce of good words and works;When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,The fear of infamy, disease and woe, _255War with its million horrors, and fierce hellShall 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, _5When soul-enfolding music floats around,The stainless mirror of the lakeRe-images the eastern gloom,Mingling convulsively its purple huesWith 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, _15Is there no hope in store?Will yon vast suns roll onInterminably, still illumingThe night of so many wretched souls,And see no hope for them? _20Will not the universal Spirit e’erRevivify this withered limb of Heaven?’
The Fairy calmly smiledIn comfort, and a kindling gleam of hopeSuffused 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; _30But the eternal worldContains 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, _35Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreathOf ever-living flame,Until the monster sting itself to death.
‘How sweet a scene will earth become!Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, _40Symphonious with the planetary spheres;When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,Will undertake regeneration’s work,When its ungenial poles no longer pointTo the red and baleful sun _45That faintly twinkles there.
‘Spirit! on yonder earth,Falsehood now triumphs; deadly powerHas fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!Madness and misery are there! _50The 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, _55Which 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, _60How 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 _65How 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, _70And 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 playfulnessOf thy untutored infancy: the trees, _75The 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 moonHer worshipper. Then thou becam’st, a boy,More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, _80Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,Which, from sensation’s relics, fancy cullsThe spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,The genii of the elements, the powersThat give a shape to Nature’s varied works, _85Had life and place in the corrupt beliefOf thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful handsWere pure of human blood. Then manhood gaveIts strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain;Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, _90Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:Their everlasting and unchanging lawsReproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodstBaffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum upThe elements of all that thou didst know; _95The 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, _100And all their causes, to an abstract pointConverging, thou didst bend and called it God!The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,The merciful, and the avenging God!Who, prototype of human misrule, sits _105High in Heaven’s realm, upon a golden throne,Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slavesOf fate, whom He created, in his sport,To triumph in their torments when they fell! _110Earth heard the name; Earth trembled, as the smokeOf His revenge ascended up to Heaven,Blotting the constellations; and the criesOf millions, butchered in sweet confidenceAnd unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds _115Of safety were confirmed by wordy oathsSworn 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 shriekOf maniac gladness, as the sacred steel _120Felt cold in her torn entrails!
‘Religion! thou wert then in manhood’s prime:But age crept on: one God would not sufficeFor senile puerility; thou framedstA tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut _125Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiendThy wickedness had pictured might affordA plea for sating the unnatural thirstFor murder, rapine, violence, and crime,That still consumed thy being, even when _130Thou heardst the step of Fate;—that flames might lightThy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieksOf parents dying on the pile that burnedTo light their children to thy paths, the roarOf the encircling flames, the exulting cries _135Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,Might sate thine hungry earEven on the bed of death!
‘But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;Thou art descending to the darksome grave, _140Unhonoured and unpitied, but by thoseWhose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,Like thine, a glare that fades before the sunOf truth, and shines but in the dreadful nightThat long has lowered above the ruined world. _145
‘Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffusedA Spirit of activity and life,That knows no term, cessation, or decay;That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, _150Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babeIn the dim newness of its being feelsThe impulses of sublunary things,And all is wonder to unpractised sense: _155But, active, steadfast, and eternal, stillGuides 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 _160Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakesIts undecaying battlement, presides,Apportioning with irresistible lawThe place each spring of its machine shall fill;So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap _165Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely drivenHeaven’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: _170No atom of this turbulence fulfilsA 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 _175Fulfils 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, _180And call the sad work glory, does it ruleAll passions: not a thought, a will, an act,No working of the tyrant’s moody mind,Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boastTheir servitude, to hide the shame they feel, _185Nor the events enchaining every will,That from the depths of unrecorded timeHave drawn all-influencing virtue, passUnrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,Soul of the Universe! eternal spring _190Of life and death, of happiness and woe,Of all that chequers the phantasmal sceneThat floats before our eyes in wavering light,Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,Whose chains and massy walls _195We feel, but cannot see.
‘Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,Necessity! thou mother of the world!Unlike the God of human error, thouRequir’st no prayers or praises; the caprice _200Of man’s weak will belongs no more to theeThan do the changeful passions of his breastTo thy unvarying harmony: the slave,Whose horrible lusts spread misery o’er the world,And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, _205His being, in the sight of happiness,That springs from his own works; the poison-treeBeneath whose shade all life is withered up,And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affordsA temple where the vows of happy love _210Are registered, are equal in thy sight:No love, no hate thou cherishest; revengeAnd favouritism, and worst desire of fameThou know’st not: all that the wide world containsAre but thy passive instruments, and thou _215Regard’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 _220Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanesAnd broken altars of the almighty FiendWhose name usurps thy honours, and the bloodThrough centuries clotted there, has floated downThe tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live _225Unchangeable! 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,—. _230The 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, _235Still pressing forward where no term can be,Like hungry and unresting flameCurls round the eternal columns of its strength.’
7.
SPIRIT:‘I was an infant when my mother wentTo 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, _5Tempered 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 _10Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.“Weep not, child!” cried my mother, “for that manHas 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, _15His ceaseless generations tell their tale;Let every part depending on the chainThat links it to the whole, point to the handThat grasps its term! let every seed that fallsIn silent eloquence unfold its store _20Of argument; infinity within,Infinity without, belie creation;The exterminable spirit it containsIs nature’s only God; but human prideIs skilful to invent most serious names _25To hide its ignorance.The name of GodHas 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, _30Even with the human dupes who build His shrines,Still serving o’er the war-polluted worldFor desolation’s watchword; whether hostsStain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as onTriumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise _35A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;Or countless partners of His power divideHis tyranny to weakness; or the smokeOf burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, _40Horribly massacred, ascend to HeavenIn 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, _45Murdering the while, uprooting every germOf truth, exterminating, spoiling all,Making the earth a slaughter-house!
‘O Spirit! through the senseBy which thy inner nature was apprised _50Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,And varied reminiscences have wakedTablets that never fade;All things have been imprinted there,The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, _55Even the unshapeliest lineamentsOf wild and fleeting visionsHave left a record thereTo testify of earth.
‘These are my empire, for to me is given _60The wonders of the human world to keep,And Fancy’s thin creations to endowWith manner, being, and reality;Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreamsOf human error’s dense and purblind faith, _65I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.Ahasuerus, rise!’
A strange and woe-worn wightArose beside the battlement,And stood unmoving there. _70His inessential figure cast no shadeUpon the golden floor;His port and mien bore mark of many years,And chronicles of untold ancientnessWere legible within his beamless eye: _75Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame;The wisdom of old age was mingled thereWith youth’s primaeval dauntlessness;And inexpressible woe, _80Chastened by fearless resignation, gaveAn 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 _85Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound;The fiery-visaged firmament expressedAbhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawnedTo swallow all the dauntless and the goodThat dared to hurl defiance at His throne, _90Girt as it was with power. None but slavesSurvived,—cold-blooded slaves, who did the workOf tyrannous omnipotence; whose soulsNo honest indignation ever urgedTo elevated daring, to one deed _95Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.These slaves built temples for the omnipotent Fiend,Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smokedWith human blood, and hideous paeans rungThrough all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard _100His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and artsHad 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 idlenessI, God, awoke; in seven days’ toil made earthFrom nothing; rested, and created man:I placed him in a Paradise, and therePlanted the tree of evil, so that he _110Might eat and perish, and My soul procureWherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,All misery to My fame. The race of menChosen to My honour, with impunity _115May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.Here I command thee hence to lead them on,Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troopsWade on the promised soil through woman’s blood,And make My name be dreaded through the land. _120Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woeShall be the doom of their eternal souls,With every soul on this ungrateful earth,Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even allShall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge _125(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.’
The murderer’s browQuivered with horror.‘God omnipotent,Is there no mercy? must our punishmentBe endless? will long ages roll away, _130And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast Thou madeIn 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 _135The sins of all the world; He shall ariseIn an unnoticed corner of the earth,And there shall die upon a cross, and purgeThe universal crime; so that the fewOn whom My grace descends, those who are marked _140As vessels to the honour of their God,May credit this strange sacrifice, and saveTheir souls alive: millions shall live and die,Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. _145Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:These in a gulf of anguish and of flameShall curse their reprobation endlessly,Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, _150Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,My honour, and the justice of their doom.What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughtsOf purity, with radiant genius bright,Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray? _155Many are called, but few will I elect.Do thou My bidding, Moses!’Even the murderer’s cheekWas blanched with horror, and his quivering lipsScarce faintly uttered—‘O almighty One,I tremble and obey!’ _160
‘O Spirit! centuries have set their sealOn this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,Since the Incarnate came: humbly He came,Veiling His horrible Godhead in the shapeOf man, scorned by the world, His name unheard, _165Save by the rabble of His native town,Even as a parish demagogue. He ledThe crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,In semblance; but He lit within their soulsThe quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword _170He brought on earth to satiate with the bloodOf truth and freedom His malignant soul.At length His mortal frame was led to death.I stood beside Him: on the torturing crossNo pain assailed His unterrestrial sense; _175And yet He groaned. Indignantly I summedThe massacres and miseries which His nameHad sanctioned in my country, and I cried,“Go! Go!” in mockery.A smile of godlike malice reillumed _180His fading lineaments.—“I go,” He cried,“But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earthEternally.”—The dampness of the graveBathed my imperishable front. I fell,And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. _185When I awoke Hell burned within my brain,Which staggered on its seat; for all aroundThe mouldering relics of my kindred lay,Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,And in their various attitudes of death _190My murdered children’s mute and eyeless skullsGlared ghastily upon me.But my soul,From sight and sense of the polluting woeOf tyranny, had long learned to preferHell’s freedom to the servitude of Heaven. _195Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly beganMy lonely and unending pilgrimage,Resolved to wage unweariable warWith my almighty Tyrant, and to hurlDefiance at His impotence to harm _200Beyond the curse I bore. The very handThat barred my passage to the peaceful graveHas crushed the earth to misery, and givenIts empire to the chosen of His slaves.These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn _205Of weak, unstable and precarious power,Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;So, when they turned but from the massacreOf unoffending infidels, to quenchTheir thirst for ruin in the very blood _210That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zealFroze every human feeling, as the wifeSheathed 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 _215Opposed 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, _220No remnant of the exterminated faithSurvived 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 _225The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,Confirming all unnatural impulses,To sanctify their desolating deeds;And frantic priests waved the ill-omened crossO’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun _230On showers of gore from the upflashing steelOf safe assassination, and all crimeMade stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.‘Spirit, no year of my eventful being _235Has passed unstained by crime and misery,Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked His slavesWith tongues whose lies are venomous, beguileThe insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was redWith murder, feign to stretch the other out _240For brotherhood and peace; and that they nowBabble of love and mercy, whilst their deedsAre marked with all the narrowness and crimeThat Freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,Reason may claim our gratitude, who now _245Establishing the imperishable throneOf truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vainThe unprevailing malice of my Foe,Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,Adds impotent eternities to pain, _250Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breastTo see the smiles of peace around them play,To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
‘Thus have I stood,—through a wild waste of yearsStruggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, _255Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,Mocking my powerless Tyrant’s horrible curseWith stubborn and unalterable will,Even as a giant oak, which Heaven’s fierce flameHad scathed in the wilderness, to stand _260A monument of fadeless ruin there;Yet peacefully and movelessly it bravesThe midnight conflict of the wintry storm,As in the sunlight’s calm it spreadsIts worn and withered arms on high _265To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’
The Fairy waved her wand:Ahasuerus fledFast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, _270Flee from the morning beam:The matter of which dreams are madeNot more endowed with actual lifeThan this phantasmal portraitureOf 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, learnThe secrets of the Future.—Time!Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, _5And from the cradles of eternity,Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleepBy the deep murmuring stream of passing things,Tear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, beholdThy 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 _15Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,And all its pulses beatSymphonious to the planetary spheres:Then dulcet music swelledConcordant with the life-strings of the soul; _20It 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 seaAnd dies on the creation of its breath, _25And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:Was the pure stream of feelingThat sprung from these sweet notes,And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathiesWith mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. _30
Joy to the Spirit came,—Such joy as when a lover seesThe chosen of his soul in happiness,And witnesses her peaceWhose woe to him were bitterer than death, _35Sees her unfaded cheekGlow mantling in first luxury of health,Thrills with her lovely eyes,Which like two stars amid the heaving mainSparkle through liquid bliss. _40
Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:‘I will not call the ghost of ages goneTo unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;The present now is past,And those events that desolate the earth _45Have faded from the memory of Time,Who dares not give reality to thatWhose being I annul. To me is givenThe wonders of the human world to keep,Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity _50Exposes now its treasure; let the sightRenew and strengthen all thy failing hope.O human Spirit! spur thee to the goalWhere virtue fixes universal peace,And midst the ebb and flow of human things, _55Show 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 hurledBy everlasting snowstorms round the poles, _60Where matter dared not vegetate or live,But ceaseless frost round the vast solitudeBound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy islesRuffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls _65Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweetTo murmur through the Heaven-breathing grovesAnd melodize with man’s blest nature there.
‘Those deserts of immeasurable sand, _70Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowedA bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s loveBroke on the sultry silentness alone,Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, _75Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;And where the startled wilderness beheldA savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,A tigress sating with the flesh of lambsThe unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, _80Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smilesTo see a babe before his mother’s door,Sharing his morning’s meal _85With the green and golden basiliskThat comes to lick his feet.
‘Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sailHas seen above the illimitable plain,Morning on night, and night on morning rise, _90Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spreadIts shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,Where the loud roarings of the tempest-wavesSo long have mingled with the gusty windIn melancholy loneliness, and swept _95The 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 soundsOf kindliest human impulses respond. _100Those 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, _105To meet the kisses of the flow’rets there.
‘All things are recreated, and the flameOf consentaneous love inspires all life:The fertile bosom of the earth gives suckTo myriads, who still grow beneath her care, _110Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:The balmy breathings of the wind inhaleHer virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: _115No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,Nor scatter in the freshness of its prideThe foliage of the ever-verdant trees;But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, _120Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruitReflects its tint, and blushes into love.
‘The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:There might you see him sporting in the sun _125Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,His teeth are harmless, custom’s force has madeHis nature as the nature of a lamb.Like passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempting banePoisons no more the pleasure it bestows: _130All bitterness is past; the cup of joyUnmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim,And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.
‘But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can knowMore misery, and dream more joy than all; _135Whose keen sensations thrill within his breastTo 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, _140The burthen or the glory of the earth;He chief perceives the change, his being notesThe gradual renovation, and definesEach movement of its progress on his mind.
‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night _145Lowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frostBasks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, _150Insensible 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: _155His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,Apprised him ever of the joyless lengthWhich his short being’s wretchedness had reached;His death a pang which famine, cold and toil _160Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital sparkClung to the body stubbornly, had brought:All was inflicted here that Earth’s revengeCould 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 dayWith a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphereScattered the seeds of pestilence, and fedUnnatural vegetation, where the land _170Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,Was Man a nobler being; slaveryHad crushed him to his country’s bloodstained dust;Or he was bartered for the fame of power,Which all internal impulses destroying, _175Makes human will an article of trade;Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,And dragged to distant isles, where to the soundOf the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the workOf all-polluting luxury and wealth, _180Which doubly visits on the tyrants’ headsThe 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, _185And priests first traded with the name of God.
‘Even where the milder zone afforded ManA seeming shelter, yet contagion there,Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late _190Availed to arrest its progress, or createThat peace which first in bloodless victory wavedHer snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,The mimic of surrounding misery, _195The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.‘Here now the human being stands adorningThis loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses, _200Which gently in his noble bosom wakeAll kindly passions and all pure desires.Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuingWhich from the exhaustless lore of human wealDawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise _205In time-destroying infiniteness, giftWith self-enshrined eternity, that mocksThe unprevailing hoariness of age,And man, once fleeting o’er the transient sceneSwift as an unremembered vision, stands _210Immortal upon earth: no longer nowHe 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, _215All 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,— _220Flee from the form of man; but gather round,And prune their sunny feathers on the handsWhich little children stretch in friendly sportTowards these dreadless partners of their play.All things are void of terror: Man has lost _225His terrible prerogative, and standsAn equal amidst equals: happinessAnd science dawn though late upon the earth;Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, _230Reason and passion cease to combat there;Whilst each unfettered o’er the earth extendTheir all-subduing energies, and wieldThe sceptre of a vast dominion there;Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends _235Its force to the omnipotence of mind,Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truthTo 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 ceaselesslyThrong through the human universe, aspire;Thou consummation of all mortal hope!Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! _5Whose 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: _10O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!
‘Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,And dim forebodings of thy lovelinessHaunting the human heart, have there entwinedThose rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss _15Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.Thou art the end of all desire and will,The product of all action; and the soulsThat by the paths of an aspiring changeHave reached thy haven of perpetual peace, _20There rest from the eternity of toilThat 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 _25Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,That for millenniums had withstood the tideOf human things, his storm-breath drove in sandAcross that desert where their stones survivedThe name of him whose pride had heaped them there. _30Yon 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 wayBefore him, but the fixed and virtuous will, _35The 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: _40First, Crime triumphant o’er all hope careeredUnblushing, 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, _45She 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 _50Through 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, _55No 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, _60And full of wonder, full of hope as he.The deadly germs of languor and diseaseDied in the human frame, and PurityBlessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.How vigorous then the athletic form of age! _65How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,Had stamped the seal of gray deformityOn all the mingling lineaments of time.How lovely the intrepid front of youth! _70Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;—Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,And elevated will, that journeyed onThrough 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 tieThe kindred sympathies of human souls,Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:Those delicate and timid impulses _80In Nature’s primal modesty arose,And with undoubted confidence disclosedThe growing longings of its dawning love,Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, _85Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.No longer prostitution’s venomed banePoisoned the springs of happiness and life;Woman and man, in confidence and love,Equal and free and pure together trod _90The mountain-paths of virtue, which no moreWere stained with blood from many a pilgrim’s feet.
‘Then, where, through distant ages, long in prideThe palace of the monarch-slave had mockedFamine’s faint groan, and Penury’s silent tear, _95A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threwYear after year their stones upon the field,Wakening a lonely echo; and the leavesOf the old thorn, that on the topmost towerUsurped the royal ensign’s grandeur, shook _100In the stern storm that swayed the topmost towerAnd whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind’s ear.‘Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aislesThe melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:It were a sight of awfulness to see _105The 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 deathTo-day, the breathing marble glows above _110To decorate its memory, and tonguesAre busy of its life: to-morrow, wormsIn silence and in darkness seize their prey.
‘Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,Fearless and free the ruddy children played, _115Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent browsWith 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 _120That mingled slowly with their native earth:There the broad beam of day, which feebly onceLighted the cheek of lean CaptivityWith a pale and sickly glare, then freely shoneOn the pure smiles of infant playfulness: _125No more the shuddering voice of hoarse DespairPealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notesOf ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birdsAnd merriment were resonant around.
‘These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: _130Their elements, wide scattered o’er the globe,To happier shapes were moulded, and becameMinistrant to all blissful impulses:Thus human things were perfected, and earth,Even as a child beneath its mother’s love, _135Was strengthened in all excellence, and grewFairer and nobler with each passing year.
‘Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the sceneCloses in steadfast darkness, and the pastFades from our charmed sight. My task is done: _140Thy 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 remainsYet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand. _145
‘Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursueThe gradual paths of an aspiring change:For birth and life and death, and that strange stateBefore the naked soul has found its home, _150All tend to perfect happiness, and urgeThe 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 _155Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shapeNew modes of passion to its frame may lend;Life is its state of action, and the storeOf all events is aggregated thereThat variegate the eternal universe; _160Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,That leads to azure isles and beaming skiesAnd happy regions of eternal hope.Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, _165Though 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. _175Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seenLove’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 _180Of 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, _185Listening 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 willIs destined an eternal war to wage _190With tyranny and falsehood, and uprootThe germs of misery from the human heart.Thine is the hand whose piety would sootheThe thorny pillow of unhappy crime,Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, _195Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:Thine is the brow whose mildness would defyIts fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,When fenced by power and master of the world.Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, _200Free 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 boonWhich thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep _205Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,And many days of beaming hope shall blessThy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.Go, happy one, and give that bosom joyWhose sleepless spirit waits to catch _210Light, 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 thankfulness. _215Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,Again the burning wheels inflameThe steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.Fast and far the chariot flew:The vast and fiery globes that rolled _220Around the Fairy’s palace-gateLessened by slow degrees and soon appearedSuch tiny twinklers as the planet orbsThat there attendant on the solar powerWith borrowed light pursued their narrower way. _225
Earth floated then below:The chariot paused a moment there;The Spirit then descended:The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, _230Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.
The Body and the Soul united then,A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: _235She looked around in wonder and beheldHenry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,And the bright beaming starsThat through the casement shone. _240
***
1. 242, 243:—
The sun’s unclouded orbRolled through the black concave.
Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations on the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites have demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles.—Some idea may be gained of the immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.
1. 252, 253:—
Whilst round the chariot’s wayInnumerable systems rolled.
The plurality of worlds,—the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at the consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness against Him.