ASCENSION DAY 
17
Tending to final bliss—to stir 
Some life to better life, this pain 
Is needful : that I grant again. 
Did they at last in glory live, 
Satan and Judas69 might forgive 
The middle time of misery, 
Forgive the wrong creation first 
Or evolution’s iron key 
Did them—provided they are passed 
Beyond all change and pain at last 
Out of this universe accurst. 
But otherwise !  I lift my voice, 
Deliberately take my choice 
Promethean, eager to rejoice, 
In the grim protest’s joy to revel 
Betwixt Iscariot and the Devil, 
Throned in their midst !  No pain to feel, 
Tossed on some burning bed of steel, 
But theirs : my soul of love should swell 
And, on those piteous floors they trod, 
Feel, and make God feel, out of Hell, 
Across the gulf impassable, 
That He was damned and I was God ! 
Ay!  Let him rise and answer me 
That false creative Deity, 
Whence came his right to rack the Earth 
With pangs of death,70 disease, and birth : 
No joy unmarred by pain and grief : 
Insult on injury heaped high 
In that quack-doctor infamy 
The Panacea of—Belief ! 
Only the selfish soul of man 
Could ever have conceived a plan 
Man only of all life to embrace, 
One planet of all stars to place 
Alone before the Father’s face ; 
Forgetful of creation’s stain, 
Forgetful of creation’s pain 
Not dumb !—forgetful of the pangs 
Whereby each life laments and hangs,  
(Now as I speak a lizard71 lies 
In wait for light-bewildered flies) 
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heaven suffers 
Hell’s pangs, 
owing to re-
proaches of 
bard. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ethical and 
eloquent de-
nunciation of 
Christian Cos-
mogony.