Collected Works (Vol. I)

THE TRIUMPH OF MAN 105 Of sea-reflecting white flowers and_ fresh orass I walk. Man’s darkness is a leathern sheath, Myself the sun-bright sword ! I have no fear, nor doubt, nor sorrow now, For I give Self to God—I give my best Of soul and blood and brain To my poor Art—-there comes to me some- how This fact: Man’s-work is God made mani- fest; Life is all Peace again. And Dreams are beyond life. Their wider scope, Limitless Empire o’er the world of thought, Help my desires to press Beyond all stars toward God and Heaven and Hope ; And in the world-amazing chase is wrought Somehow—all Happiness. THE TRIUMPH OF MAN. BEFORE the darkness, earlier than being, When yet thought was not, shapeless and unseeing, | Made misbegotten of deity on death, There brooded on the waters the strange breath Of an incarnate hatred. Darkness fell And chaos, from prodigious gulphs of hell. Life, that rejoiced to travail with a man, Looked where the cohorts of destruction ran, Saw darkness visible, and was afraid, Seeing. There grew like Death a monster shade, Blind as the coffin, as the covering sod Damp, as the corpse obscene, the Christian God. So to the agony dirges of despair Man cleft the womb, and shook the icy air With bitter cries for light and life and love. But these, begotten of the world above, Withdrew their glory, and the iron world Rolled on its cruel way, and passion furled Its pure wings, and abased itself, and bore Fetters impure, and stooped, and was no more. But resurrection’s ghastly power grew strong, And Lust was born, adulterous with Wrong, The Child of Lies; so man was blinded still, Garnered the harvest of abortive ill, For wheat reaped thistles, and for worship wrought A fouler idol of his meanest thought : A monster, vengeful, cruel, traitor, slave, Lord of disease and father of the grave, A treacherous bully, feeble as malign, Intolerable, inhuman, undivine, With spite close girded and with hatred shod, A snarling cur, the Christian’s Christless God. Out ! misbegotten monster ! with thy brood, The obscene offspring of thy pigritude, Incestuous wedlock with the Pharisees That hail the Christ a son of thee! Our knees Bend not before thee, and our earth-bowed brows Shake off their worship, and reject thy spouse, The harlot of the world! For, proud and free, We stand beyond thy hatred, even we: We broken in spirit beneath bitter years, Branded with the burnt-offering of tears, Spit out upon the lie, and in thy face Cast back the slimy falsehood ; to your place, Ye Gadarean swine, too foul to fling Into the waters that abound and spring ! Back, to your mother filth! With hope, and youth, Love, light, and power, and mastery of truth Armed, we reject you; the bright scourge we ply, Your howling spirits stumble to your sty : The worm that was your lie—our heel its head Bruises, that bruised us once; the snake is dead. Who of mankind that honours man discerns That man of all men, whose high spirit burns,