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?-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 peans rung Through all the long-drawn aisles.
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
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.
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 gulf 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
Of purity, with radiant genius bright, Or lit with human reason's earthly ray? Many are called, but few will I elect. Do thou my bidding, Moses!
Even the murderer's cheek
Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips Scarce faintly uttered-O almighty one,
O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, Since the incarnate came: humbly he came, Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard, Save by the rabble of his native town,
Even as a parish demagogue. He led
The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace In semblance; but he lit within their souls
The quenchless flames of zeal, and blest the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the blood Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. At length his mortal frame was led to death. I stood beside him: on the torturing cross No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense; And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed The massacres and miseries which his name Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, Go! go! in mockery.
A smile of godlike malice re-illumined His fading lineaments.-I go, he cried, But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth Eternally. -The dampness of the grave Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. When I awoke, hell burned within my brain, Which staggered on its seat; for all around The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, And in their various attitudes of death My murdered children's mute and eyeless sculls Glared ghastily upon me.
From sight and sense of the polluting woe Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began My lonely and unending pilgrimage, Resolved to wage unweariable war With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl Defiance at his impotence to harm Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand That barred my passage to the peaceful grave Has crushed the earth to misery, and given Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.
These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn Of weak, unstable, and precarious power; Then preaching peace, as now they practise war, So, when they turned but from the massacre Of unoffending infidels, to quench
Their thirst for ruin in the very blood
That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal Froze every human feeling, as the wife
Sheathed 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 Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath; Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace, 'Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, No remnant of the exterminated faith Survived 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 The sword of his revenge, when grace descended, Confirming all unnatural impulses,
To sanctify their desolating deeds;
And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross O'er the unhappy earth: then shone the Sun On showers of gore from the upflashing steel Of safe assassination, and all crime Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
Spirit! no year of my eventful being
Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his
Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile
The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red With murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they now Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds Are marked with all the narrowness and crime That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise; Reason may claim our gratitude, who now Establishing the imperishable throne
Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain The unprevailing malice of my foe,
Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, Adds impotent eternities to pain,
Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast To see the smiles of peace around them play, To frustrate, or to sanctify their doom.
Thus have I stood,-through a wild waste of years Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined, Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse With stubborn and unalterable will,
Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand A monument of fadeless ruin there; Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, As in the sun-light's calm it spreads Its worn and withered arms on high To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.
The Fairy waved her wand:
Ahasuerus fled
Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, Flee from the morning beam:
The matter of which dreams are made Not more endowed with actual life Than this phantasmal portraiture Of wandering human thought,
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