That for uncounted ages has remained. 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 defend, 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
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 blo-som on thy tomb, That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?
THUS do the generations of the earth1 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 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,
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