XI.

"O Love! who to the hearts of wandering

men

Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves!
Justice, or truth, or joy! those only can
From slavery and religion's labyrinth caves
Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves,
To give to all an equal share of good,
To track the steps of Freedom though
through graves

She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, To weep for crime though stained with thy friend's dearest blood.

XII.

"To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot, To own all sympathies, and outrage none, And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,

Until life's sunny day is quite gone down, To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,

To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of

Woe;

To live, as if to love and live were one,— This is not faith or law, nor those who bow To thrones on Heaven or Earth such destiny may know.

XIII.

"But children near their parents tremble

now,

Because they must obey-one rules another, For it is said God rules both high and low, And man is made the captive of his brother, And Hate is throned on high with Fear his mother,

Above the Highest-and those fountain-cells,

Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,

Are darkened-Woman, as the bond-slave,

dwells

Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.

666

XIV.

Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may

weave

A lasting chain for his own slavery;

In fear and restless care that he may live
He toils for others, who must ever be
The joyless thralls of like captivity;

He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;
He builds the altar, that its idol's fee

May be his very blood; he is pursuing, O, blind and willing wretch! his own obscure undoing.

XV.

"Woman!-she is his slave, she has become A thing I weep to speak-the child of scorn, The outcast of a desolated home,

Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn

Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, As calm decks the false Ocean:-well ye

know

What Woman is, for none of Woman born, Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe, Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.

XVI.

"This need not be; ye might arise, and

will

That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;

That love, which none may bind, be free to fill

The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary

With crime, be quenched and die.-Yon promontory

Even now eclipses the descending moon !— Dungeons and palaces are transitory

High temples fade like vapour-Man alone Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.

666

XVII.

'Let all be free and equal!—from your hearts

I feel an echo; through my inmost frame Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts

Whence come ye, friends? alas, I cannot

name

All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame, On your worn faces; as in legends old Which make immortal the disastrous fame Of conquerors and impostors false and bold, The discord of your hearts I in your looks behold.

XVIII.

"Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood

Forth on the earth? or bring ye steel and gold,

That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?

Or from the famished poor, pale, weak, and cold,

Bear ye the earnings of their toil? unfold! Speak! are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue

Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?

Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew, And I will be a friend and sister unto you.

666

XIX.

'Disguise it not-we have one human heart

All mortal thoughts confess a common home: Blush not for what may to thyself impart Stains of inevitable crime: the doom

Is this, which has, or may, or must become Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil

Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb,

Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil

Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.

XX.

"Disguise it not-ye blush for what ye hate,
And Enmity is sister unto Shame;
Look on your mind-it is the book of fate-
Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name
Of misery-all are mirrors of the same;
But the dark fiend who with his iron pen
Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his
fame

Enduring there, would o'er the heads of

men

Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

XXI.

"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing Of many names, all evil, some divine, Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;

Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine

Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine
To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside

It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine When Amphisbæna' some fair bird has tied, Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

666

XXII.

Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,

Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine

own.

It is the dark idolatry of self,

Which, when our thoughts and actions once

are gone,

Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;

O vacant expiation! be at rest.

The past is Death's, the future is thine own; And love and joy can make the foulest breast A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

666

XXIII.

'Speak thou! whence come ye?'-A Youth made reply,

'Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep

1 Assuming the poet to owe this snake to Lucan (Pharsalia, book ix), he would seem to have transferred to it some of the attributes of the Seps, described in the same book.-ED.