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