’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."’