No More Learning

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, _55
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, _60
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 _65
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, _70
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, _75
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 worshipper. Then thou becam'st, a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, _80
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 give a shape to Nature's varied works, _85
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, _90
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:
Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst
Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up
The elements of all that thou didst know; _95
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, _100
And all their causes, to an abstract point
Converging, thou didst bend and called it God!
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
The merciful, and the avenging God!
Who, prototype of human misrule, sits _105
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! _110
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 _115
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 _120
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 framedst
A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut _125
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 _130
Thou heardst 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 _135
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,
Might sate thine hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!

'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave, _140
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 lowered above the ruined world. _145

'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, _150
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: _155
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 _160
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 _165
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: _170
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 _175
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 battlefield,
That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, _180
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, _185
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 _190
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 _195
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 _200
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, _205
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 _210
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 _215
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 _220
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 _225
Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,
Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
Nor the interminable flood,
Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
Availeth to destroy,--. _230
The sensitive extension of the world.
That wondrous and eternal fane,
Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
To do the will of strong necessity,
And life, in multitudinous shapes, _235
Still pressing forward where no term can be,
Like hungry and unresting flame
Curls round the eternal columns of its strength. '

7.

SPIRIT:
'I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there:
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, _5
Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob _10
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
"Weep not, child! " cried my mother, "for that man
Has said, There is no God. "'

FAIRY:
'There is no God!
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed:
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, _15
His ceaseless generations tell their tale;
Let every part depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! let every seed that falls
In silent eloquence unfold its store _20
Of argument; infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;
The exterminable spirit it contains
Is nature's only God; but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names _25
To hide its ignorance.
The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of His worshippers,
Whose names and attributes and passions change,
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, _30
Even with the human dupes who build His shrines,
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
For desolation's watchword; whether hosts
Stain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise _35
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of His power divide
His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, _40
Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven
In honour of His name; or, last and worst,
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, _45
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house!

'O Spirit! through the sense
By which thy inner nature was apprised _50
Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
And varied reminiscences have waked
Tablets that never fade;
All things have been imprinted there,
The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, _55
Even the unshapeliest lineaments
Of wild and fleeting visions
Have left a record there
To testify of earth.

'These are my empire, for to me is given _60
The wonders of the human world to keep,
And Fancy's thin creations to endow
With manner, being, and reality;
Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams
Of human error's dense and purblind faith, _65
I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.
Ahasuerus, rise! '

A strange and woe-worn wight
Arose beside the battlement,
And stood unmoving there. _70
His inessential figure cast no shade
Upon the golden floor;
His port and mien bore mark of many years,
And chronicles of untold ancientness
Were legible within his beamless eye: _75
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 primaeval dauntlessness;
And inexpressible woe, _80
Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.

SPIRIT:
'Is there a God? '

AHASUERUS:
'Is there a God! --ay, an almighty God,
And vengeful as almighty! Once His voice _85
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, _90
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 _95
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 paeans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard _100
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
And confidant of the all-knowing one.
These were Jehovah's words:-- _105

'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 _110
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 _115
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. _120
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 _125
(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God. '

The murderer's brow
Quivered with horror.
'God omnipotent,
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away, _130
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 _135
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 _140
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. _145
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, _150
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? _155
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,
I tremble and obey! ' _160

'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, _165
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 blessed the sword _170
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; _175
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 reillumed _180
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. _185
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 _190
My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls
Glared ghastily upon me.
But my soul,
From sight and sense of the polluting woe
Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
Hell's freedom to the servitude of Heaven. _195
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 _200
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 _205
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 _210
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 _215
Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,
Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty's wrath;
Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, _220
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 _225
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 _230
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 _235
Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked His slaves
With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile
The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
With murder, feign to stretch the other out _240
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 _245
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, _250
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, _255
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 _260
A monument of fadeless ruin there;
Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
As in the sunlight's calm it spreads
Its worn and withered arms on high _265
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, _270
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. _275

NOTE:
_180 reillumined edition 1813.

8.

THE FAIRY:
'The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:
It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn
The secrets of the Future. --Time!
Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,
Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, _5
And from the cradles of eternity,
Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
Tear thou that gloomy shroud. --Spirit, behold
Thy glorious destiny! ' _10

Joy to the Spirit came.
Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil,
Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:
Earth was no longer Hell;
Love, freedom, health, had given _15
Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,
And all its pulses beat
Symphonious to the planetary spheres:
Then dulcet music swelled
Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; _20
It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,
Catching new life from transitory death,--
Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
And dies on the creation of its breath, _25
And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:
Was the pure stream of feeling
That sprung from these sweet notes,
And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies
With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. _30

Joy to the Spirit came,--
Such joy as when a lover sees
The chosen of his soul in happiness,
And witnesses her peace
Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, _35
Sees her unfaded cheek
Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
Thrills with her lovely eyes,
Which like two stars amid the heaving main
Sparkle through liquid bliss. _40

Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:
'I will not call the ghost of ages gone
To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;
The present now is past,
And those events that desolate the earth _45
Have faded from the memory of Time,
Who dares not give reality to that
Whose being I annul. To me is given
The wonders of the human world to keep,
Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity _50
Exposes now its treasure; let the sight
Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal
Where virtue fixes universal peace,
And midst the ebb and flow of human things, _55
Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves.

'The habitable earth is full of bliss;
Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, _60
Where matter dared not vegetate or live,
But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls _65
Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves
And melodize with man's blest nature there.

'Those deserts of immeasurable sand, _70
Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed
A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love
Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, _75
Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
And where the startled wilderness beheld
A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, _80
Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,
Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
To see a babe before his mother's door,
Sharing his morning's meal _85
With the green and golden basilisk
That comes to lick his feet.

'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
Has seen above the illimitable plain,
Morning on night, and night on morning rise, _90
Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
So long have mingled with the gusty wind
In melancholy loneliness, and swept _95
The desert of those ocean solitudes,
But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,
Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
Of kindliest human impulses respond. _100
Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, _105
To meet the kisses of the flow'rets there.

'All things are recreated, and the flame
Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, _110
Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: _115
No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,
Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;
But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, _120
Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,
Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.

'The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:
There might you see him sporting in the sun _125
Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,
His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made
His nature as the nature of a lamb.
Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane
Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: _130
All bitterness is past; the cup of joy
Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim,
And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.

'But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know
More misery, and dream more joy than all; _135
Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast
To mingle with a loftier instinct there,
Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,
Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;
Who stands amid the ever-varying world, _140
The burthen or the glory of the earth;
He chief perceives the change, his being notes
The gradual renovation, and defines
Each movement of its progress on his mind.

'Man, where the gloom of the long polar night _145
Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,
Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;
His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, _150
Insensible to courage, truth, or love,
His stunted stature and imbecile frame,
Marked him for some abortion of the earth,
Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,
Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: _155
His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,
Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,
Apprised him ever of the joyless length
Which his short being's wretchedness had reached;
His death a pang which famine, cold and toil _160
Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark
Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:
All was inflicted here that Earth's revenge
Could wreak on the infringers of her law;
One curse alone was spared--the name of God. _165

'Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day
With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,
Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere
Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed
Unnatural vegetation, where the land _170
Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,
Was Man a nobler being; slavery
Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust;
Or he was bartered for the fame of power,
Which all internal impulses destroying, _175
Makes human will an article of trade;
Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,
And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound
Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work
Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, _180
Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads
The long-protracted fulness of their woe;
Or he was led to legal butchery,
To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,
Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, _185
And priests first traded with the name of God.

'Even where the milder zone afforded Man
A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,
Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,
Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late _190
Availed to arrest its progress, or create
That peace which first in bloodless victory waved
Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:
There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
The mimic of surrounding misery, _195
The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.
'Here now the human being stands adorning
This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;
Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses, _200
Which gently in his noble bosom wake
All kindly passions and all pure desires.
Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing
Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal
Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise _205
In time-destroying infiniteness, gift
With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
The unprevailing hoariness of age,
And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
Swift as an unremembered vision, stands _210
Immortal upon earth: no longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
And horribly devours his mangled flesh,
Which, still avenging Nature's broken law,
Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, _215
All evil passions, and all vain belief,
Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,
The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
No longer now the winged habitants,
That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,-- _220
Flee from the form of man; but gather round,
And prune their sunny feathers on the hands
Which little children stretch in friendly sport
Towards these dreadless partners of their play.
All things are void of terror: Man has lost _225
His terrible prerogative, and stands
An equal amidst equals: happiness
And science dawn though late upon the earth;
Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, _230
Reason and passion cease to combat there;
Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend
Their all-subduing energies, and wield
The sceptre of a vast dominion there;
Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends _235
Its force to the omnipotence of mind,
Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth
To decorate its Paradise of peace. '

NOTES:
_204 exhaustless store edition 1813.
_205 Draws edition 1813. See Editor's Note.

9.

'O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!
To which those restless souls that ceaselessly
Throng through the human universe, aspire;
Thou consummation of all mortal hope!
Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! _5
Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,
Verge to one point and blend for ever there:
Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: _10
O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,
And dim forebodings of thy loveliness
Haunting the human heart, have there entwined
Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss _15
Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.
Thou art the end of all desire and will,
The product of all action; and the souls
That by the paths of an aspiring change
Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, _20
There rest from the eternity of toil
That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

'Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;
That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,
So long had ruled the world, that nations fell _25
Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,
That for millenniums had withstood the tide
Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand
Across that desert where their stones survived
The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. _30
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
Was but the mushroom of a summer day,
That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust:
Time was the king of earth: all things gave way
Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, _35
The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,
That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.

'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;
Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene,
Till from its native Heaven they rolled away: _40
First, Crime triumphant o'er all hope careered
Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;
Whilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue's attributes,
Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,
Till done by her own venomous sting to death, _45
She left the moral world without a law,
No longer fettering Passion's fearless wing,--
Nor searing Reason with the brand of God.
Then steadily the happy ferment worked;
Reason was free; and wild though Passion went _50
Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,
Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,
Yet like the bee returning to her queen,
She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow,
Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, _55
No longer trembling at the broken rod.

'Mild was the slow necessity of death:
The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,
Without a groan, almost without a fear,
Calm as a voyager to some distant land, _60
And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
The deadly germs of languor and disease
Died in the human frame, and Purity
Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.
How vigorous then the athletic form of age! _65
How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,
Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
On all the mingling lineaments of time.
How lovely the intrepid front of youth! _70
Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;--
Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
And elevated will, that journeyed on
Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness,
With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. _75

'Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom's self,
And rivets with sensation's softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:
Those delicate and timid impulses _80
In Nature's primal modesty arose,
And with undoubted confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love,
Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,
That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, _85
Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.
No longer prostitution's venomed bane
Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;
Woman and man, in confidence and love,
Equal and free and pure together trod _90
The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more
Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

'Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride
The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked
Famine's faint groan, and Penury's silent tear, _95
A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw
Year after year their stones upon the field,
Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves
Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower
Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook _100
In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower
And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind's ear.
'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles
The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:
It were a sight of awfulness to see _105
The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!
Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.
A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
To-day, the breathing marble glows above _110
To decorate its memory, and tongues
Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
Fearless and free the ruddy children played, _115
Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
With the green ivy and the red wallflower,
That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
There rusted amid heaps of broken stone _120
That mingled slowly with their native earth:
There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
Lighted the cheek of lean Captivity
With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone
On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: _125
No more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair
Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds
And merriment were resonant around.

'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: _130
Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe,
To happier shapes were moulded, and became
Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
Thus human things were perfected, and earth,
Even as a child beneath its mother's love, _135
Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew
Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene
Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past
Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done: _140
Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,
With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
My spells are passed: the present now recurs.
Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. _145

'Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
The gradual paths of an aspiring change:
For birth and life and death, and that strange state
Before the naked soul has found its home, _150
All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
The restless wheels of being on their way,
Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:
For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense _155
Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
Life is its state of action, and the store
Of all events is aggregated there
That variegate the eternal universe; _160
Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
And happy regions of eternal hope.
Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:
Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, _165
Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,
Yet Spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,
To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,
That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,
Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. _170

'Fear not then, Spirit, Death's disrobing hand,
So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns;
'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,
The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. _175
Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen
Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
Mingling with Freedom's fadeless laurels there,
And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene _180
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,
When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, _185
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?
Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will
Is destined an eternal war to wage _190
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
The germs of misery from the human heart.
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, _195
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:
Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
When fenced by power and master of the world.
Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, _200
Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,
And therefore art thou worthy of the boon
Which thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep _205
Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,
And many days of beaming hope shall bless
Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.
Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch _210
Light, life and rapture from thy smile. '

The Fairy waves her wand of charm.
Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,
That rolled beside the battlement,
Bending her beamy eyes in thankful ness. _215
Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,
Again the burning wheels inflame
The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.
Fast and far the chariot flew:
The vast and fiery globes that rolled _220
Around the Fairy's palace-gate
Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared
Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs
That there attendant on the solar power
With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. _225

Earth floated then below:
The chariot paused a moment there;
The Spirit then descended:
The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,
Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, _230
Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.

The Body and the Soul united then,
A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:
Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: _235
She looked around in wonder and beheld
Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,
Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,
And the bright beaming stars
That through the casement shone. _240

***


NOTES ON QUEEN MAB.


SHELLEY'S NOTES.

1. 242, 243:--

The sun's unclouded orb
Rolled through the black concave.

Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the
midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is
owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their
reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations
propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles
repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly
exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations
on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have demonstrated that light
takes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the
earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles. --Some idea may be gained of the
immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years
would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of
them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a
distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.

1. 252, 253:--

Whilst round the chariot's way
Innumerable systems rolled.

The plurality of worlds,--the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a
most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery
and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of
religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is
impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite
machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at
the consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All
that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the
childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the
knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness
against Him.
The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth,
and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a
calculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least
54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson's
"Encyclopedia", article Light. ) That which appears only like a thin and
silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable
clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating
numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of
suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm,
regular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity.

4. 178, 179:--

These are the hired bravos who defend
The tyrant's throne.

To employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an
enlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in
rank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the
purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark; to inflict upon them
all the variety of wound and anguish; to leave them weltering in their
blood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of
the dying and the dead,--are employments which in thesis we may maintain
to be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation
and delight. A battle we suppose is won:--thus truth is established,
thus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely requires no common
sagacity to discern the connexion between this immense heap of
calamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice.

'Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calamity, sit
unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the
storm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been
trepanned into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their
peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a man whose
business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the
innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the
abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible
that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.

To these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to
add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its
first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of
men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably
teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he
is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to
strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know
cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the
right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor. '--Godwin's
"Enquirer", Essay 5.

I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my
abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it never again
may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one
that ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion.

FALSEHOOD AND VICE.

A DIALOGUE.

Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones
To hear a famished nation's groans,
And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe
That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow,--
Those thrones, high built upon the heaps
Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,
Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron,
Red with mankind's unheeded gore,
And War's mad fiends the scene environ,
Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,
There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,
High raised above the unhappy land.

FALSEHOOD:
Brother! arise from the dainty fare,
Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow;
A finer feast for thy hungry ear
Is the news that I bring of human woe.

VICE:
And, secret one, what hast thou done,
To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?
I, whose career, through the blasted year,
Has been tracked by despair and agony.

FALSEHOOD:
What have I done! --I have torn the robe
From baby Truth's unsheltered form,
And round the desolated globe
Borne safely the bewildering charm:
My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor
Have bound the fearless innocent,
And streams of fertilizing gore
Flow from her bosom's hideous rent,
Which this unfailing dagger gave. . .
I dread that blood! --no more--this day
Is ours, though her eternal ray
Must shine upon our grave.
Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given
To thee the robe I stole from Heaven,
Thy shape of ugliness and fear
Had never gained admission here.

VICE:
And know, that had I disdained to toil,
But sate in my loathsome cave the while,
And ne'er to these hateful sons of Heaven,
GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;
Hadst thou with all thine art essayed
One of thy games then to have played,
With all thine overweening boast,
Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost! --
Yet wherefore this dispute? --we tend,
Fraternal, to one common end;
In this cold grave beneath my feet,
Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet.

FALSEHOOD:
I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:
She smothered Reason's babes in their birth;
But dreaded their mother's eye severe,--
So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,
And loosed her bloodhounds from the den. . . .
They started from dreams of slaughtered men,
And, by the light of her poison eye,
Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully:
The dreadful stench of her torches' flare,
Fed with human fat, polluted the air:
The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries
Of the many-mingling miseries,
As on she trod, ascended high
And trumpeted my victory! --
Brother, tell what thou hast done.

VICE:
I have extinguished the noonday sun,
In the carnage-smoke of battles won:
Famine, Murder, Hell and Power
Were glutted in that glorious hour
Which searchless fate had stamped for me
With the seal of her security. . .
For the bloated wretch on yonder throne
Commanded the bloody fray to rise.
Like me he joyed at the stifled moan
Wrung from a nation's miseries;
While the snakes, whose slime even him DEFILED,
In ecstasies of malice smiled:
They thought 'twas theirs,--but mine the deed!
Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed--
Ten thousand victims madly bleed.
They dream that tyrants goad them there
With poisonous war to taint the air:
These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,
Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,
And with their gains to lift my name
Restless they plan from night to morn:
I--I do all; without my aid
Thy daughter, that relentless maid,
Could never o'er a death-bed urge
The fury of her venomed scourge.

FALSEHOOD:
Brother, well:--the world is ours;
And whether thou or I have won,
The pestilence expectant lowers
On all beneath yon blasted sun.
Our joys, our toils, our honours meet
In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:
A short-lived hope, unceasing care,
Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,
A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep
Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep,
A tyrant's dream, a coward's start,
The ice that clings to a priestly heart,
A judge's frown, a courtier's smile,
Make the great whole for which we toil;
And, brother, whether thou or I
Have done the work of misery,
It little boots: thy toil and pain,
Without my aid, were more than vain;
And but for thee I ne'er had sate
The guardian of Heaven's palace gate.

5. 1, 2:--

Thus do the generations of the earth
Go to the grave, and issue from the womb.

'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the
earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down,
and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the
south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually,
and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers
run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence
the rivers come, thither they return again. '--Ecclesiastes, chapter 1
verses 4-7.

5. 4-6.

Even as the leaves
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
Has scattered on the forest soil.

Oin per phullon genee, toiede kai andron.
Phulla ta men t' anemos chamadis cheei, alla de th' ule
Telethoosa phuei, earos d' epigignetai ore.
Os andron genee, e men phuei, e d' apolegei.

Iliad Z, line 146.

5. 58:--
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.

Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;
Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,
Despicere undo queas alios, passimque videre
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae;
Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.
O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!

Lucret. lib. 2.

5. 93, 94.

And statesmen boast
Of wealth!

There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of
gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn
the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In
consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is
enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of
his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of
disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of
opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter
of his country's prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the
manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only
to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who
employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until
'jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,' flatters himself that
he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of
vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its
continuance; and many a fete has been given, many a woman has eclipsed
her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage
trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it
palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to
labour,--for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets
for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable
hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man
is far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all
its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its
innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him:--no; for the
pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false
pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is
afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than
this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in
the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to
their usefulness (See Rousseau, "De l'Inegalite parmi les Hommes", note
7. ): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the
exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the
earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through
contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his
unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.

I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the
natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its
desirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it
is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an
equal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be
preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human
labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass
of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members,
is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to
approximate to the redemption of the human race.

Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from
the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor,
by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are
precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be
subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health,
or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to
subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly
depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and
that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease,
lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable
burthen.

English reformers exclaim against sinecures,--but the true pension list
is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by
the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which
support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity
of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against
the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by
the loss of all real comfort.

'The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the
human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a
slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and
sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the
labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among
the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each
man's share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would
be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small
comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it
will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are
not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be
devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock
of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and
more exquisite sources of enjoyment.

. . .

'It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression
should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist.
Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth
and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period
affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set
out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and
oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state
of barbarism. '--Godwin's "Enquirer", Essay 2. See also "Pol. Jus. ", book
8, chapter 2.

It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences
of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour
equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour
two hours during the day.

5. 112, 113:--

or religion
Drives his wife raving mad.

I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the
mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to
incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience
of every physician.

Nam iam saepe homines patriam, carosquo parentes
Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. --Lucretius.

5. 189:--

Even love is sold.

Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of
positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable
wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of
reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary
affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the
perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very
essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy,
nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its
votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.

How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to
specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A
husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each
other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment
after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny,
and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the
right of private judgement should that law be considered which should
make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the
inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human
mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more
unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and
capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of
imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of
the object.

The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness
and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the
Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even
until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end
of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the
fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been
discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour
of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling! (The first
Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death;
if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death;
if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished
and their estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory
were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring
of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the
sentence. --Gibbon's "Decline and Fall", etc. , volume 2, page 210. See
also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even
marriage, page 269. )

But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and
disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the
quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the
connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the
comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are
greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation.
Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure
it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion
as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its
indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same
woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such
a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the
votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to
many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and
absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the
amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and
in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of
delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth
than its belief?

The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of
instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and
virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love,
spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to
appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their
partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less
generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger
out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state
of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their
children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are
nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and falsehood.
Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered
their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery:
they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found
that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for
ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been
separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were
miserable and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that
wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to
the perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the
little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is
without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each
would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation,
and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity.

Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its
accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the
dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts
and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the
punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape
reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the
prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of
unerring nature;--society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal
war: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is
the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life
of infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all
return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet SHE is in fault, SHE
is the criminal, SHE the froward and untamable child,--and society,
forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion
from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of
her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day,
which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed
one-tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold.
Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society
of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and
miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate
sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied;
annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling
which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind
alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease
become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations
suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a
monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural
temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root
of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race
to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could
not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness
than marriage.

I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural
arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that
the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from
the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long
duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.
But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That
which will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and
right; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint.

In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical
code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear
every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the
inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays
and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the
mirror of nature! --

6. 45, 46:--

To the red and baleful sun
That faintly twinkles there.

The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, in its present
state of obliquity, points. It is exceedingly probable, from many
considerations, that this obliquity will gradually diminish, until the
equator coincides with the ecliptic: the nights and days will then
become equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons
also. There is no great extravagance in presuming that the progress of
the perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of
intellect; or that there should be a perfect identity between the moral
and physical improvement of the human species. It is certain that wisdom
is not compatible with disease, and that, in the present state of the
climates of the earth, health, in the true and comprehensive sense of
the word, is out of the reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us
that the earth is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year
becoming more and more perpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong
evidence afforded by the history of mythology, and geological
researches, that some event of this nature has taken place already,
affords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an
oscillation, as has been surmised by some late astronomers. (Laplace,
"Systeme du Monde". )

Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone have been found in the
north of Siberia, and on the banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been
found in the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which demand the
present climate of Hindostan for their production. (Cabanis, "Rapports
du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme", volume 2 page 406. ) The researches
of M. Bailly establish the existence of a people who inhabited a tract
in Tartary 49 degrees north latitude, of greater antiquity than either
the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations
derived their sciences and theology. (Bailly, "Lettres sur les Sciences,
a Voltaire". ) We find, from the testimony of ancient writers, that
Britain, Germany, and France were much colder than at present, and that
their great rivers were annually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also
that since this period the obliquity of the earth's position has been
considerably diminished.

6. 171-173:--

No atom of this turbulence fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.

'Deux examples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible le principe qui
vient d'etre pose; nous emprunterons l'un du physique at l'autre du
moral. Dans un tourbillon de poussiere qu'eleve un vent impetueux,
quelque confus qu'il paraisse a nos yeux; dans la plus affreuse tempete
excitee par des vents opposes qui soulevent les flots,--il n'y a pas une
seule molecule de poussiere ou d'eau qui soit placee au HASARD, qui
n'ait sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu ou elle se trouve, et qui
n'agisse rigoureusement de la maniere dont ella doit agir. Un geometre
qui connaitrait exactement les differentes forces qui agissent dans ces
deux cas, at las proprietes des molecules qui sent mues, demontrerait
que d'apres des causes donnees, chaque molecule agit precisement comme
ella doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu'elle ne fait.

'Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelquefois les societes
politiques, et qui produisent souvent le renversement d'un empire, il
n'y a pas une seule action, une seule parole, une seule pensee, une
seule volonte, une seule passion dans las agens qui concourent a la
revolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui ne soit necessaire,
qui n'agissa comme ella doit agir, qui n'opere infailliblemont les
effets qu'eile doit operer, suivant la place qu'occupent ces agens dana
ce tourbillon moral. Cela paraitrait evident pour une intelligence qui
sera en etat de saisir et d'apprecier toutes las actions at reactions
des esprits at des corps de ceux qui contribuent a cette
revolution. '--"Systeme de la Nature", volume 1, page 44.

6. 198:--

Necessity! thou mother of the world!

He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the
events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an
immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which
could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other
place than it does act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our
experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the
operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and
the consequent inference of one from the other.