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Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul
That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.
Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,
Falsehood, mistake, and lust;

But the eternal world

Contains at once the evil and the cure.
Some eminent in virtue shall start up,
Even in perversest time:

The truths of their pure lips, that never die,
Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath
Of ever-living flame,

Until the monster sting itself to death.

"How sweet a scene will earth become

Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,
Symphonious with the planetary spheres—
When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,
Will undertake regeneration's work!
When its ungenial poles no longer point
To the red and baleful sun

That faintly twinkles there!

"Spirit, on yonder earth

Falsehood now triumphs; deadly Power
Has fixed its seal upon the lip of Truth.
Madness and misery are there :

The happiest is most wretched. Yet confide-
Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.
Now to the scene I show in silence turn,
And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,
Which Nature soon, with re-creating hand,
Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.
How bold the flight of Passion's wandering wing,
How swift the step of Reason's firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life,
How terrorless the triumph of the grave,-
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
Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,
Blotting the constellations; and the cries

Of millions butchered in sweet confidence
And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness as the sacred steel

Felt cold in her torn entrails!

"Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime.
But age crept on: one God would not suffice
For senile puerility. Thou framed'st

A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut
Thy misery-thirsting soul; that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,

That still consumed thy being, even when

Thou heard'st the step of Fate; that flames might light Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks

Of parents dying on the pile that burned

To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,
Might sate thy hungry ear

Even on the bed of death!

"But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Unhonoured and unpitied but by those

Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has loured above the ruined world.

"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,

Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused
A Spirit of activity and life,

That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractised sense;
But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still

Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law

The place each spring of its machine shall fill;—
So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap
Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven
Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords
(Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner
Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
All seems unlinked contingency and chance)
No atom of this turbulence fulfils

A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.
Even the minutest molecule of light
That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow
Fulfils its destined though invisible work
The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
When merciless ambition or mad zeal
Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,
That blind they there may dig each other's graves,
And call the sad work glory, does it rule
All passions. Not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant's moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel,
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass

Unrecognized or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe! eternal spring
Of life and death, of happiness and woe,
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light,
Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,
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
Requir❜st 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 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 interminable flood

nor the tempest breath of time,

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