Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,
All that is mean and villainous, with rage
And know, that had 1 disdained to toil,
But sat in my loathsome cave the while,
And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven,
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER given?
Hadst thou with all thine art essayed
One of thy games then to have played,
With all thine overweening boast,
Falsehood? I tell thee thou hadst lost ;-
Yet wherefore this dispute?—we tend
Fraternal, to one common end:
In this cold grave beneath my feet,
Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours meet.
I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth?
She smothered reason's babes in their birth;
But dreaded their mother's eye severe,
So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,
And loosed her bloodhounds from the den......
They started from dreams of slaughtered men,
And, by the light of her poison eye,
Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully;
The dreadful stench of her torches flare,
Fed with human fat, polluted the air!
The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries
Of the many mingling miseries,
As on she trod, ascended high
And trumpeted my victory!-
Brother, tell what thou hast done.
Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, Alone might kindle, they are decked in wealth,
have extinguished the noon-day sun,
In the carnage smoke of battles won:
Famine, murder, hell, and power,
Were glutted in that glorious hour
Which searchless fate had stamped for me
With the seal of her security.....
For the bloated wretch on yonder throne
Commanded the bloody fray to rise:
Like me he joyed at the stifled moan
Wrung from a nation's miseries;
While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled,
In ecstacies of malice smiled.
They thought 'twas theirs,-but mine the deed!
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed,
Ten thousand victims madly bleed.
They dream that tyrants goad them there
With poisonous war to taint the air:
These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,
Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,
And with their gains to lift my name,
Restless they plan from night till morn:
I-I do all; without my aid
Thy daughter, that relentless maid,
Could never o'er a death-bed urge
The fury of her venomed scourge.
Brother, well-the world is ours;
And whether thou or I have won,
The pestilence expectant lowers
On all beneath yon blasted sup,
Honour and power, then are sent abroad
To do their work. The pestilence that stalks
In gloomy triumph through some eastern land
Is less destroying. They cajole with gold,
And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth
Already crushed with servitude: he knows
His wretchedness too late, and cherishes
Repentance for his ruin, when his doom
Is sealed in gold and blood!
Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare
The 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
Their pityless tread lies torn and trampled, where
Honour 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,
Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,
Our joys, our toils, our honours meet
In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:
A short-lived hope, unceasing care,
Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep
Ere gapes the graves unclosing deep,
A tyrant's dream, a coward's start,
The ice that clings to a priestly heart,
A judge's frown, a courtier's smile,
Make the great whole for which we toil;
And, brother, whether thou or I
Have done the work of misery,
It little boots; thy toil and pain,
Without my aid were more than vain;
And but for thee I ne'er had sate
The guardian of heaven's palace gate.
Support the system whence their honours flow......
They have three words :-well tyrants know their use,
Will pay them for their loan, with usury
Torn from a bleeding world! God, Hell, and Heaven.
A vengeful, pityless, and almighty fiend,
Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage
Of tameless tygers hungering for blood.
Hell, a red gulph of everlasting fire,
Where poisonous and undying worms prolong
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves
Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.
And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie
Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe
Before the mockeries of earthly power.
These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,
Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys.
Omnipotent in wickedness: the while
Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does
His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend
Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.
They rise, they fall; one generation comes
Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.
It fades, another blossoms, yet behold!
Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom,
Withering 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
Spread round the valley of its paradise.
Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!
Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts
Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,
With whom thy master was;-or thou delightest
In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,
All misery weighing nothing in the scale
Against thy short lived fame: or thou dost load
With cowardice and crime the groaning land,
A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!
Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er
Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days
Days of unsatisfying listlessness?
Dost thou not cry e'er night's long rack is o'er,
When will the morning come? Is not thy youth
A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?
Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?
Are not thy views of unregretted death
Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind
Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,
Incapable of judgment, hope, or love?
And dost thou wish the errors to survive
That bar thee from all sympathies of good,
After the miserable interest
Thou holdest in their protraction? When the grave
Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,
Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth
To 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?
THUS do the generations of the earth*
Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,
* One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place whence he arose. The wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again, according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whence the rivers come, thither shall they return again.
|