Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,
To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame Of natural love in sensualism, to know That hour as blessed when on his worthless days The frozen hand of Death shall set its seal, Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. The one is man that shall hereafter be ; The other, man as vice has made him now.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade; And, to those royal murderers whose mean thrones Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround Their palaces, participate the crimes
That force defends, and from a nation's rage Secure the crown which all the curses reach That famine, frenzy, woe, and penury, breathe. These are the hired bravos who defend The tyrant's throne-the bullies of his fear : These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, The refuse of society, the dregs
Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, All that is mean and villanous with rage
Which hopelessness of good and self-contempt Alone might kindle. They are decked in wealth, Honour, and power; then are sent abroad
To do their work. In gloomy triumph
The pestilence that stalks
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 pitiless 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,
Support the system whence their honours flow.
They have three words (well tyrants know their use,
Well pay them for the loan, with usury
Torn from a bleeding world)—God, Hell, and Heaven. A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage Of tameless tigers hungering for blood : Hell, a red gulf 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 delight'st 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! Ay, 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, ere 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 hold'st 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, Surviving still the imperishable change That renovates the world. Even as the leaves Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
on the forest soil, and heaped
For many seasons there, though long they choke (Loading with loathsome rottenness the land)
All germs of promise, yet, when the tall trees From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,
Lie level with the earth to moulder there,
They fertilize the land they long deformed, Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die :- Thus suicidal Selfishness, that blights
The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war With passion's unsubduable array. Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness,— Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all The wanton horrors of her bloody play; Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, Shunning the light, and owning not its name; Compelled by its deformity to screen With flimsy veil of justice and of right Its unattractive lineaments that scare All save the brood of ignorance; at once The cause and the effect of tyranny; Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile; Dead to all love but of its abjectness, With heart impassive by more noble powers Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame : Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears, to disenthrall.
Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or nature yield;
Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,
And natural kindness hasten to supply
From the full fountain of its boundless love,
For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.
Commerce, beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring;
But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand Scatter their withering curses, and unfold The doors of premature and violent death To pining famine and full-fed disease,
To all that shares the lot of human life;
Which poisoned, body and soul-scarce drags the chain That lengthens as it goes, and clanks behind.
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power, Upon a shining ore, and called it gold; Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue.
Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, Success has sanctioned to a credulous world The ruin, the disgrace, the woe, of war. His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes The despot numbers; from his cabinet These puppets of his schemes he moves at will (Even as the slaves by force or famine driven Beneath a vulgar master) to perform A task of cold and brutal drudgery;— Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!
The harmony and happiness of man
Yield to the wealth of nations; that which lifts
His nature to the heaven of its pride
Is bartered for the poison of his soul,
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes; Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, Withering all passion but of slavish fear, Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring. Even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart
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