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Whose chains and massy walls
We feel, but cannot see.

Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,

Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride,
His being, in the sight of happiness,

That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,
And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
A temple where the vows of happy love
Are registered, are equal in thy sight:
No love, no hate, thou cherishest; revenge
And favouritism, and worst desire of fame

Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
Regardest 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 pai 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.

VII.

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;

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 worshippers,

раде. 7,8

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 shews, 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 dreams
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
Upon the golden floor;

His port and mien bore mark of many years,

And chronicles of untold ancientness

Were legible within his beamless eye:

Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth:
Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame;
The wisdom of old age was mingled there
With youth's primæval dauntlessness;
And inexpressible woe,

Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

Is there a God?

SPIRIT.

AHASUERUS.

Is there a God?-aye, an almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice
Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged

To elevated daring, to one deed

Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.

These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous pæans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,

Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
And confident of the all-knowing one.
These were Jehovah's words.

From an eternity of idleness

I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man:

I placed him in a paradise, and there
Planted the tree of evil, so that he

Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
All misery to my fame. The race of men

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Chosen to my honour, with impunity

May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops
Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
And make my name be dreaded through the land.
Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,-even all
Shall perish to fulfil the blind revenge

(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.

Quivered with horror.

The murderer's brow

God omnipotent,

Is there no mercy? must our punishment

Be endless? will long ages roll away,

And see no term? Oh, wherefore hast thou made

In mockery and wrath this evil earth?

Mercy becomes the powerful-be but just:

O God! repent and save.

One way remains:

I will beget a son, and he shall bear

The sins of all the world: he shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge

The universal crime; so that the few

On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
As vessels to the honour of their God,

May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave.
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:
These, in a gulph of anguish and of flame,
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honour and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts

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