Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
There is a moral desert now:
The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, Contrasted with those ancient fanes, Now crumbling to oblivion; The long and lonely colonnades, Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, Seem like a well-known tune,
Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear, Remembered now in sadness.
But, oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast
Of human nature there!
Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around-
Then, shuddering, meets his own.
Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowled and hypocritical monk Prays, curses, and deceives.
Spirit! ten thousand years Have scarcely passed away,
Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, Wakes the unholy song of war,
Arose a stately city,
Metropolis of the western continent : There, now, the mossy column-stone, Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp, Which once appeared to brave All, save its country's ruin; There the wide forest scene,
Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
Of gardens long run wild,
Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps Chance in that desert has delayed,
Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. Yet once it was the busiest haunt, Whither, as to a common centre, flocked Strangers, and ships, and merchandize : Once peace and freedom blest The cultivated plain :
But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, Fled, to return not, until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss
Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity.
There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins: And from the burning plains Where Lybian monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.
How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass, That springeth in the morn
And perisheth ere noon,
Is an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere, Think, feel and live like man ; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.
The Fairy paused. The Spirit,
In ecstacy of admiration, felt
All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times,
Which dim tradition interruptedly
Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; Yet dim from their infinitude.
The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.
FAIRY! the Spirit said, And on the Queen of Spells Fixed her ethereal eyes,
I thank thee. Thou hast given A boon which I will not resign, and taught A lesson not to be unlearned. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly: For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.
Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! Much yet remains unscanned. Thou knowest how great is man, Thou knowest his imbecility: Yet learn thou what he is; Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless Time prepares For every living soul.
Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks, Encompass it around: the dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He passes on: The King, the wearer of a gilded chain That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites-that man
Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
All that they love from famine: when he hears The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.
Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety,-if wealth
The spring it draws from poisons not, or vice, Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom; then that king Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils His unforced task, when he returns at even, And by the blazing faggot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.
Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye- Oh! mark that deadly visage.
Oh! must this last for ever! Awful death, I wish yet fear to clasp thee! Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace! Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity In penury and dungeons! wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude: yet shunn'st The palace I have built thee! Sacred peace! Oh visit me but once, and pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered soul.
Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And peace defileth not her snowy robes In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters; His slumbers are but varied agonies, They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots frame To punish those who err: earth in itself Contains at once the evil and the cure; And all-sufficing nature can chastise Those who transgress her law,-she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault The punishment it merits.
Against a king's employ? No-'tis not strange, He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not nature, nor deduce The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne!
That basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption !—what are they? -The drones of the community; they feed On the mechanic's labour; the starved hind For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death, To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.
Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose? Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury
On those who build their palaces, and bring [vice; Their daily bread?-From vice, black loathsome From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that genders misery, and makes Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, Revenge, and murder.—And when reason's voice, Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happiness and harmony; When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;-kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now.
Where is the fame Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound From time's light foot-fall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Aye! to-day Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes! That mandate is a thunder-peal that died In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash On which the midnight closed, and on that arm The worm has made his meal.
The virtuous man Who, great in his humility, as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good, And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge, Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit;-when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more:
High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonising death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new-created sense within his soul Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness? and, when Rome, With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, Crushed not the arm, red with her dearest blood, Had not submissive abjectness destroyed Nature's suggestions?
Look on yonder earth : The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the Arise in due succession; all things speak [trees, Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, In nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy,- All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate?
Spirit of Nature! no!
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs Alike in every human heart.
Thou, aye, erectest there Thy throne of power unappealable: Thou art the judge beneath whose nod Man's brief and frail authority
Is powerless as the wind That passeth idly by.
How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Studded with stars unutterably bright, [vault, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur Seems like a canopy which love has spread [rolls, To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, So stainless that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of peace;-all form a scene Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still.
In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns, the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.
Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven!-that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round. Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight on her starry throne! Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men
Inebriate with rage:-loud, and more loud The discord grows; till pale death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and the conquer'd draws His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts That beat with anxious life at sun-set there; How few survive, how few are beating now! All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapt round its struggling powers.
The grey morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous Before the icy wind slow rolls away, [smoke And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful Of the outsallying victors: far behind, Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen- Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,
Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.
Surpassing Spirit!-wert thou human else? I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery,
Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. Man's evil nature, that apology
Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth; whilst specious names Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man Inherits vice and misery, when force
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.
Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps For happiness and sympathy, how stern From its new tenement, and looks abroad
And desolate a tract is this wide world! How withered all the buds of natural good! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame, Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe Heaped on the wretched parent, whence it sprung, By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, May visit not its longings. It is bound May breathe not. The untainting light of day Ere it has life yea, all the chains are forged Long ere its being all liberty and love And peace is torn from its defencelessness; Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed To abjectness and bondage!
Throughout this varied and eternal world Soul is the only element, the block
Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, That for uncounted ages has remained.
For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, A garden shall arise, in loveliness Surpassing fabled Eden.
That formed this world so beautiful, that spread Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Blasted with withering curses; placed afar The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower, Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child,
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds; these beget Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring; Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, That variegate the eternal universe. Soul is not more polluted than the beams
Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.
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 blest 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 bravoes who defend The tyrant's throne-the bullies of his fear : These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, The refuge 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. The pestilence that stalks In gloomy triumph 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 [Heaven. Torn from a bleeding world!-God, Hell and A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, Whose mercy is a nick-name 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 crinies. 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! Aye, 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 Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped For many seasons there, though long they choke, Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, All geams 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;
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