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
How 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,
And 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 playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,

The 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 moon
Her worshiper. Then thou becam❜st, a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,
Monstrous or vast or beautifully wild,
Which from sensation's relics fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That gave a shape to nature's varied works,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief

Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain.
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:
Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood'st
Baffled and gloomy. Then thou didst sum up
The elements of all that thou didst know,-
The 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;
And all their causes to an abstract point
Converging, thou didst bend, and call it God!
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,

The merciful, and the avenging God,--

Who, prototype of human misrule, sits

High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,

Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work, Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves

Of fate, whom he created in his sport,

To triumph in their torments when they fell.

Earth heard the name; Earth trembled, as the smoke

No love, no hate, thou cherishest; revenge,
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame,

Thou know'st not. All that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regard'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
Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes
And broken altars of the almighty fiend
Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood,
Through centuries clotted there, has floated down
The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
Unchangeable! 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,-

The 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,

Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame

Curls round the eternal columns of its strength."
7. Spirit. I was an infant when my mother went
To 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,
Tempered 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
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.

"Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man Has 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,
His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;

Let every part depending on the chain

That links it to the whole point to the hand

That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls,
In silent eloquence, unfold its store

Of argument. Infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;

a

The exterminable spirit it contains
Is nature's only God; but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance.

The name of God

Has fenced about all crime with holiness;
Himself the creature of his worshipers;

Whose names and attributes and passions change-
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord-
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
For desolation's watch-word: whether hosts
Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll whilst Brahmins raise
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of his power divide
His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
In 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,--
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house!

O Spirit! through the sense

By which thy inner nature was apprised

Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
And varied reminiscences have waked

Tablets that never fade;

All things have been imprinted there,
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,--
Even the unshapeliest lineaments

Of wild and fleeting visions

Have left a record there

To testify of earth.

These are my empire, for to me is given

The wonders of the human world to keep,

And fancy's thin creations to endow

With manner, being, and reality;

Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dream

Of human error's dense and purblind faith,

I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.

Ahasuerus, rise!

A strange and woe-worn wight
Arose beside the battlement,
And stood unmoving there.

His inessential figure cast no shade