And swells their sway beyond the closing tomb.
Hence rose his gods, that mystic monstrous lore
Of blood-stain’d altars and of priestly power,
Hence blind credulity on all dark things,
False morals hence and hence the yoke of kings.
Yon starry vault that round him rolls the spheres
And gives to earth her seasons, days and years,
The source designates and the clue imparts
Of all his errors and of all his arts.
There spreads the system that his ardent thought
First into emblems, then to spirits wrought;
Spirits that ruled all matter and all mind,
Nourisht or famisht, kill’d or cured mankind,
Bade him neglect the soil whereon he fed,
Work with hard hand for that which was not bread,
Erect the temple, darken deep the shrine,
Yield the full hecatomb with awe divine,
Despise this earth, and claim with lifted eyes
His health and harvest from the meteor’d skies.
Accustom’d thus to bow the suppliant head
And reverence powers that shake his heart with dread,
His pliant faith extends with easy ken
From heavenly hosts to heaven-anointed men;
The sword, the tripod join their mutual aids
To film his eyes with more impervious shades,
Create a sceptred idol and enshrine
The robber chief in attributes divine,
Arm the new phantom with the nation’s rod,
And hail the dreadful delegate of God.
Two settled slaveries thus the race control,
Engross their labors and debase their soul;
Till creeds and crimes and feuds and fears compose
The seeds of war and all its kindred woes.
Unfold, thou Memphian dungeon! there began
The lore of Mystery, the mask of man;
There fraud with science leagued, in early times,
Plann’d a resplendent course of holy crimes,
Stalkt o’er the nations with gigantic pace,
With sacred symbols charm’d the cheated race,
Taught them new grades of ignorance to gain,
And punish truth with more than mortal pain—
Unfold at last thy cope! that man may see
The mines of mischief he has drawn from thee.
—Wide gapes the porch with hieroglyphics hung,
And mimic zodiacs o’er its arches flung;
Close labyrinth’d here the feign’d Omniscient dwells,
Dupes from all nations seek the sacred cells;
Inquiring strangers, with astonisht eyes,
Dive deep to read these subterranean skies,
To taste that holiness which faith bestows
And fear promulgates through its world of woes.
The bold Initiate takes his awful stand,
A thin pale taper trembling in his hand;
Through hells of howling monsters lies the road,
To season souls and teach the ways of God.
Down the crampt corridor, far sunk from day,
On hands and bended knees he gropes his way,
Swims roaring streams, through dens of serpents crawls,
Descends deep wells and clambers flaming walls;
Now thwart his lane a lake of sulphur gleams,
With fiery waves and suffocating steams;
He dares not shun the ford; for full in view
Fierce lions rush behind and force him through.
Long ladders heaved on end, with banded eyes
He mounts, and mounts, and seems to gain the skies;
Then backward falling, tranced with deadly fright
Finds his own feet and stands restored to light.
Here all dread sights of torture round him rise;
Lasht on a wheel, a whirling felon flies;
A wretch, with members chain’d and liver bare,
Writhes and disturbs the vulture feasting there:
One strains to roll his rock, recoiling still;
One, stretcht recumbent o’er a limpid rill,
Burns with devouring thirst; his starting eyes,
Swell’d veins and frothy lips and piercing cries
Accuse the faithless eddies, as they shrink
And keep him panting still, still bending o’er the brink.
At last Elysium to his ravisht eyes
Spreads flowery fields and opens golden skies;
Breathes Orphean music through the dancing groves,
Trains the gay troops of beauties, graces, loves,
Lures his delirious sense with sweet decoys,
Fine fancied foretaste of eternal joys,
Fastidious pomp or proud imperial state—
Illusions all, that pass the Ivory Gate!
Various and vast the fraudful drama grows,
Feign’d are the pleasures, as unfelt the woes;
Where sainted hierophants, with well taught mimes,
Play’d first the role for all succeeding times;
Which, vampt and varied as the clime required,
More trist or splendid, open or retired,
Forms local creeds, with multifarious lore,
Creates the God and bids the world adore.
Lo at the Lama’s feet, as lord of all,
Age following age in dumb devotion fall;
The youthful god, mid suppliant kings enshrined,
Dispensing fate and ruling half mankind,
Sits with contorted limbs, a silent slave,
An early victim of a secret grave;
His priests by myriads famish every clime
And sell salvation in the tones they chime.
See India’s Triad frame their blood-penn’d codes,
Old Ganges change his gardens for his gods,
Ask his own waves from their celestial hands,
And choke his channel with their sainted sands.
Mad with the mandates of their scriptured word,
And prompt to snatch from hell her dear dead lord,
The wife, still blooming, decks her sacred urns,
Mounts the gay pyre, and with his body burns.
Shrined in his golden fane the Delphian stands,
Shakes distant thrones and taxes unknown lands.
Kings, consuls, khans from earth’s whole regions come,
Pour in their wealth, and then inquire their doom;
Furious and wild the priestess rends her veil,
Sucks through the sacred stool the maddening gale,
Starts, reddens, foams and screams and mutters loud,
Like a fell fiend, her oracles of God.
The dark enigma, by the pontiff scroll’d
In broken phrase, and close in parchment roll’d,
From his proud pulpit to the suppliant hurl’d,
Shall rive an empire and distract the world.
And where the mosque’s dim arches bend on high,
Mecca’s dead prophet mounts the mimic sky;
Pilgrims, imbanded strong for mutual aid,
Through dangerous deserts that their faith has made,
Train their long caravans, and famisht come
To kiss the shrine and trembling touch the tomb,
By fire and sword the same fell faith extend
And howl their homilies to earth’s far end.
Phoenician altars reek with human gore,
Gods hiss from caverns or in cages roar,
Nile pours from heaven a tutelary flood,
And gardens grow47 the vegetable god.
Two rival powers the magian faith inspire,
Primeval Darkness and immortal Fire;
Evil and good in these contending rise,
And each by turns the sovereign of the skies.
Sun, stars and planets round the earth behold
Their fanes of marble and their shrines of gold;
The sea, the grove, the harvest and the vine
Spring from their gods and claim a birth divine;
While heroes, kings and sages of their times,
Those gods on earth, are gods in happier climes;
Minos in judgment sits, and Jove in power,
And Odin’s friends are feasted there with gore.
Man is an infant still; and slow and late
Must form and fix his adolescent state,
Mature his manhood and at last behold
His reason ripen
