;-ttfiJi\\\l\\ C&e Ectieiarton of t. DiUine. 05p X Ccutts LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Class C&e IRMation of @t, Hotie t&e Eetieiation of t Lotie t&e Ditune, T6p JF. Coutts Lane ep $ anti jRtto gorfc The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. William Wake. Prisons are built of stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. Ibid. 158275 " I comprehend a love so fiery hot, It burns its natural veil of august shame, And stands sublimely in the nude, as chaste As Medicean Venus." Elizabeth "Barrett Yea : lust insults, but love transfigures, sense ; And lust has veils, but inwardly is nude ; Love is the child unshamed, and lust, the prude; Love human is ; lust, angel in pretence ; Familiar love can never give offence ; Self-conscious, anxious lust is ever rude; For lust is only love's similitude, Distorted image of true excellence. UN! Be all the blight of God's immediate ban On savourers of poison at the feast Of Love, the bridegroom ! For as beast from man Immeasurably far, as man to beast Indefinitely near, so small the span From love to lust, so wide as West from East ! B 2 &e Revelation of St. love t&e Dtoine t LEGION is Love ; or else he sums A thousand pomps of glittering train And splendid pageant ; for he comes In different shape to every twain ! So once I cried ; but now recall My error and recant my haste : Though Love be on the lips of all, How few can taste, how few can taste ! Some worship him with terror, lest Their urns of destiny he spill And spoil a sortilege more blest ; And these of terror have their fill ! While some, whose reckless passion spent Would count Affection far above Her origin and element. Have grown incredulous of Love. XI I care not for the man who seems Averse from women, stern and staid,- Nor ever worships in his dreams The abstract, universal Maid. I scarce believe he worships not ; I half surmise he worships ill ; And keeps his heart from waxing hot By cynic warpings of the will. For what is buried in the bud Must either blossom forth or be Empoisoned ; for the virile blood Repudiates virginity. Of those that love not, when they can, Most sinister I read the sign j For who would holier be than Man, May holier be, but less divine. m The laws of God are not unmade, Howe'er we tamper with the text ; On life this ordinance is laid, That Mind can never be unsexed. The Mind Religious gropes within The entrails of Earth's loveliness, By sinful touch to plant a sin In love that is not passionless; 10 And, cultivating foul alarms In maidens' unconsidering lives, Grants all allurement to the arms Of harlots, less unnatural wives ! Their heart is colder than the grave, Their feet go down to ways of hell ? But yet they barter semblance brave Of loving passionately well. II ifa When drenchings of maternal drill Have made our damsels' blood grow dark ; When joyless generations chill Its native warmth and quench the spark Of impulse ; when no women dare, Rather than Love should be forsworn, Accept the World's accusing stare ; What kind of creature will be born ? 12 What strange, weird creature, undesigned By God or Demon, and unknown To that instinctive human Mind, Which, holding from no Church his throne, Was crowned by Him who strewed the dust Across the Void and Vast, to vex The reign of Death with Love and Lust, And cried on high, " Let there be Sex ! " b A pious, yet an evil, tongue Once wished the world were womanless, By some past folly strongly stung To folly's mood of bitterness. For wilder still the wild pursuit Of fame and opulence would grow, More fierce the predatory brute Ambition, roaming to and fro, Impatient of another's need, And envious of another's food, Yet, brought to bay, so apt to plead The greatest number's greatest good,- Save Love himself the mind divide From cupiscence to hate and hoard, And Woman draw the heart aside By sweet enticements of accord. in For look you ! Man is selfish still, And selfish most, when most a prude ; Impatient to inflict an ill To win his own beatitude. For what if God (avenging, say, The wrongs of Mary Magdalen And all her race) ordained to slay, Not women, good or bad, but men ? 16 Would damsels, with consenting word, Pronounce the new creation good, Unjealous of the mated bird, Her nesting hour and motherhood ? Though some be born or nurtured nuns, Enfeebled with degenerate flaw, Their uninfected impulse runs From Tolstoi to diviner law. bit Her sex pursues her ; though she take Strait vows to mortify desire, And contradict, for Jesu's sake, The ordinance of Jesu's Sire ; Although the world's contempt she flout, To save her sisters from their shame, Or labour day and night to scout Unwedded Love's detested name ; 18 Or lave in blood her dainty hands, To heal the hurt ; or tend the sick In cruel, pestilential lands, A flame, dividing dead and quick j The welling of her fairest deeds, Deflected from its natural course, From one instinctive fount proceeds, - Maternal love's familiar source. c 2 Wit In companies of men, the theme Oft turns to Love; and all diverse Is everything they doubt or deem Of Love, the blessing or the curse. In many different modes they speak, But still with contradiction rife, A thousand ribaldries that reek With all the littleness of life; 2O And if, perchance, one soul more wise, Who face to face with Love has stood, Remembers how his father's eyes Once on his mother used to brood, * So fast the jest and jeer go round, He dares not soar, while others tread, Lest folly pull him to the ground And ridicule his hardihead. 21 is And yet, methinks, the manual mark Of God on common things of Earth, The Presence in the wooden Ark, Is not solemnity, but mirth. Though dread the unavoided lot To which all move and all succumb, And humour, suffering this, is not, And gladness, seeing this, is dumb, 22 Yet Death is normal ; Life, the smile God paints upon the lips of Death, To make us dream a little while Of laughter and delight of breath ! And so to Love our laughter clings ; For dotard Death is dull to see ; But Love is youngest of all things, And full of immortality. I would not murder mean content, Nor give them wings that hate to fly ; Not mine be their disparagement ; Most mortals merely live and die. For servants of a careless lord, Exacting not his dues of thought, Because he knows the tax abhorred, The poet's rhyme was never wrought. 'Tis wrought for those who doubt that Man Is only God's disordered toy ; Incredulous that he would ban Enjoyment, who created joy ; But sure the universal search For pleasure, to its flock denied By each un-universal Church, By God himself is justified. XI The pious maid in terror walks Of Man ; the pious man of her ! Behind them both Religion stalks, Persistent, warning whisperer ! In endless eddies vaguely blown By hatred of their own desire, They fancy Sex by God was sown To feed the Everlasting Fire ; 26 The very love with which they're dowered In lustful dread of lust is drowned, For what avails a mind deflowered The virgin flesh that wraps it round ? So Chastity in session cites To judgment all they say or see r So many prisoners she indites, No room remains for Chastity. sit These carry, 'neath a tempting show, Like berries of a ruddy rind That children pluck from quick-set row, A poison for the tender mind. With sinful interest in sins By heedless innocence unnamed, They run about with coats of skins For making naked babes ashamed. 28 Not robes, that lure the human ape To dalliance, stir their shameful blood; Only the white, innocuous shape Of unbedizened Womanhood. They wear their sex upon their sleeves For daws to peck at ; sexless they Alone, whom mutual passion leaves At leisure from the clinging clay. mi The mind that loves not leans to lust ; Impassioned minds alone are pure : They loathe to turn their wine to must ; They guard the vintage, safe and sure. Not instantly they find their flower, Unsatisfied with easy goal ; But when they find her, hour by hour They live to learn her, soul to soul. 30 Stern chastity let others feel ; Strong principle let others prate : No blast of impulse makes them reel. From laws of lust emancipate. No stranger woman lures or frights Their fancy ; they are fancy-free ; For knowing Love, they know delights More pure than boasted purity. ith The filthy mind that fears its thought, The captive mind that sins and sins, Believe redemption can be wrought By Parsifals and Lohengrins. But worms, that in their mortal hour More numerous offspring would beget 4 Are duller than the mateless flower Whose sexes in one zone are set. False prophets ! If ye seek to prove How passionate worms, ye judge amiss ! Too amorous they to know of love, Too prodigal to care for bliss ! i Because ye fear the gift of fire, Must all the Universe go freeze ? To amputate the World's desire Could never cure the World's disease. 33 sir I know no more lascivious sight Than Parsifal before the walls Of Klingsor's castle ; and no light Corrupter than from Wagner falls. An honest man, who loved his dame, His bride or mistress, could have riven An easier passage through that flame Of flaunting courtesans to heaven ! 34 Not his to parley with those fairs, To palter with their beckoning eyes, Or dream of bartering for such wares His own unpurchasable prize ! No chrismed spear need Manhood crave, To pierce the enchanter Folly's pale ; He cleaves with Passion's trenchant glaive His path to Love, the only Grail. 35 D 2 riri The poet of " the blameless King,"- How fancied he his hero spent His undetermined hours of Spring And mazed moons of discontent? How passed he that distempered age, Unformed, fantastical, perplexed, When ladies teaze the pretty page And love to see him hot and vexed ? What disciplined his " heats of youth ? " Or did he a eddy round and round " ? Or dared old Merlin say the sooth And with true manhood kept him crowned ? Or held he, like Sir Galahad, All damsels in a nameless fear ? . Then was Sir Launcelot never mad, Nor ever false was Guenevere ! 37 dm For still Religion halts between The maiden's tomb, the infant's cot ; (Since only once the Nazarene Was in a virgin womb begot); And doubtful which most aids his power, The small unconscious proselyte Or she that will renounce her dower Of womanhood, for God's delight, He stands between the sun and shade, He teaches this impossible mean, That foul and common may be made By muttered magic fair and clean ! In vain he consecrates the wine, To purify the sacrament, In vain he sanctifies the sign, Except the inward grace consent. THE ERSiTY 1 siriii I cannot think they do God's will Who raise a sacramental sign High on the Galilean hill Where Jesus made the water wine, And thither turn the damsel's eyes To seek a consecrated goal, Forgetful that the lover's prize Is only found within the soul 40 Where passion's Sancgreal fills the shrine, That else is empty, garnished, swept, And holds the only nuptial wine, The vintage from creation kept ! Beside the door, like rays of sun, The seraphs stand, to guard from sin The holy vase ; but Love, as one Of royal birth, shall enter in. Come hither, child, and hear a thing Kept secret since the world began ! And yet not I the message bring, But all the prophet-bards to Man. When you the Marriage Symbol see, And votaries in abasement roll, Remember, the reality Inhabits nothing save the Soul. 42 Save in your heart of hearts you bear For him who sues to make you bride The very passion that would dare Of all but him to be denied, No regent power assumed by Rome, No grace of less vicariate See Shall cleanse you, though you win a Home Or wanton in Society ! 43 For how is Lust by Love arraigned, Base passion by the passion pure, If Love from loving be restrained, Or Love of loving be not sure ? O bride that waits the bride-groom's arms, What bring you to his fond caress ? A spirit vitiate with alarms, Or enervate with emptiness ? 44 Then why unbolt the chamber locks, To crucifix and convent gear Admitting, when your husband knocks, The demon you professed to fear ? Oh, rise and fly before he come ! Lest passionate Love, by you defiled, Rush forth to seek a purer home ! . . Go, get you to a nunnery, child ! 45 God deemed that Eden's innocence Could not be kept by Man, alone : And Milton held, with sturdy sense, That flesh of flesh and bone of bone Was shaped by God from Adam's side : No soul of alien saintlihead ; No basilisk thing, & loveless bride ; But apt and willing to be wed. But when, too cognisant of ill, With strange lascivious craft they strove To imitate by conscious will The sweet, spontaneous deeds of Love, Death entered. . . . Yet not all was lost : Before the Seraph shut the gate, A little Love the threshold crossed And followed them disconsolate ! 47 " From superstition's deadly thralls Deliver us," we rightly pray, When History's bloody page recalls The errors of an earlier day : But yet, has superstition ceased ? What means this pilgrimage of brides, To join the sacrificial feast Where God himself, they say, presides ? Although ambition be attained And conscience by the priest be freed, What if the sanction God ordained Be wanting, Love's imperious need ? If so, howe'er the Church impute The chastity her faith implies, These stand not far above the brute, That eats and drinks and multiplies. 49 mit Those celibates that crowd the sky And hold in simple fee their youth, What think they of our litany Of plain and platitudinous truth, That Marriage is the corner-stone Of Home; nay, more, of Social Life? Or envy they the sweets unknown Of husband, family, or wife ? I know not how the angels fare ; But this I know, one soul at least, In robes of privileged despair, Shall flout the heavenly Wedding Feast ; Shall enter in and speak on high : u Not by Thy law of sex I come Attired thus ; but clothed am I By laws of Social Life and Home ! " E 2 xxib Meseems that individual guilt Makes hiding-holes in common good, And many a victim's blood is spilt, Because the priest delights in blood ! The marriage sanction feeds the strength Of nations, -^grown beyond all girth, Portentous,-^-rand the venomous length Of armies that enfold the Earth ; But ever and anon, by fiend In hierarchal robes arrayed, Some innocent, some lamb unweaned, Across the bloody stone is laid ; The people half avert their eyes, Or else are held in selfish awe ; " The welfare of the most ! " he cries ; And they respond, " It is the Law ! " 53 ssfr Hither the strolling Waxworks came ; Her lover brought her to the Show, The very night he wrought her shame ; A year ago, a year ago. How different looks the sordid room ! What different folk have come to hear The magistrates dispensing doom To devotees of tavern beer ! 54 And must she now, for suffering wrong. Unwomanly confession make, Before this coarse, contemptuous throng ? For baby's sake, for baby's sake ! Her soul is sickening from the task ! Her mother takes her nerveless hand ; The wretched pittance she must ask, And bear the brand, and bear the brand ! 55 xxtii O ladies, ye whom passion stirs No more than thunder far away, That round the opal mountain-spurs Beats, like a summer sea, all day, Now tell me, ladies, when began The real crime between these twain ? You answer, u When the selfish man Plucked pleasure at her cost of pain." O sedulous to guard the fire Of Hymen's altar ! Yet ye prove Too much; or else with me admire Her sweet abandonment of love. Ye miss the man's essential sin, That even devils might dare to hate : He heard the Social Ghost steal in And whisper low, " Repudiate ! " 57 mbii Brothels, 'tis true, are built of stones Religious ; and the flaunting flower Of Marriage sucks from harlots* bones The self-respect the streets devour. For Man made Marriage ; God made Love : And Man the mystic Idol wrought As one should cast a silver dove And think the Holy Ghost is caught. Are Idols, then, not wholly ill. Though formally condemned ? . . He knows Who keeps the World in childhood still, And pleased with images and shows : But, if the Social Ark we boast, Who boasts the social kennel-streams That bear it up ? . . . The Holy Ghost ? . We live in dreams, we live in dreams. 59 sstriii Unlovingly these judgments sound; And yet they shall not be annulled For all the beauty ever crowned With all the blossoms ever culled ! By prophets shall the world be saved ; For not with fleshly eyes they see; And future peoples shall be graved With prophecies of poesy. 60 For all the singers teach us this (Though oft they sing with impulse blind), That only Love's victorious bliss By passion purifies the mind. A myriad ways they shape the theme, While itching fools stand round and gape ; They give occasion to blaspheme, But yet again the theme they shape ! 61 xxix Upbraid me not because I sing Outside the violets and thyme ; I cannot keep within the ring Where pretty poets pluck their rhyme, And twist gay garlands for the feast. Believing that mere shape and hue Ennoble men above the beast, Or worms that know not what they do. 62 The fairness of the flower is not Within itself; but in the Mind Its heavenly beauty is begot By the Eternal Type behind; And so I count the humblest reed, Toned to the stream of thought that flows About the world, an apter weed For minstrels than the trellised rose. XXX Some day, when war is self-devoured And buccaneering trade is slain, When over every land is showered The harvest of its native plain, Art will be seen the noblest thing That God has ever brought to birth, The soul through semblance shadowing, The saving salt of all the Earth ! For when the wolf is laid to sleep And serpents win no more regard, The World's entombed Soul shall leap To light again, the Sacred Bard ! No beggar of the public crust, No pensioner on treasure-trove, The great Antagonist of Lust, The great Evangelist of Love ! They batter at the public gate, The beggar-bards, a rabble rout ! The Watch within is obdurate, The priests and soldiers keep them out ! For those cry "Impious ! " These cry " Fools ! ' Unless one sing a martial strain Or else his dogg'rel doctrine schools To time the sacerdotal train : 66 Him they admit ; and him who brings A puppet-booth, where viler verse Is screamed by dolls to villain strings Than madmen to their walls rehearse ! Not yet the common mind abhors The bastard notes of genius bought; For e'en with poverty it wars Less fiercely than it wars with Thought. F 2 Rise, Poesy, and claim thine own ! Let not young Science steal the thought Philosophy and Verse alone In happier days together wrought ! Give o'er, give o'er the twaddling lay Of moon and dream and passing mood, An insult to the dawning day Whose generations cry for food. 68 Imagination ! Truth's own son And sole interpreter ! O Art ! Who weldest diverse things in one And cleavest unities apart, Religion search and Science scan. But yet of neither make thy choice ; Then of the Universe and Man Be thine the Vision, thine the Voice ! xxxiii O Poets, ye that sometime quaffed The mountain rills of Castaly, If ye despise your holy craft, Let there be war 'twixt you and me ! For though a feeble sword I shake, With me the larger legions ride Of all who suffered for the sake Of Poesy and martyrs died. They suffered an imperative stress, Bent bows that no man might unbend, To count the World unworthiness, To speak their message to the end. The World tormented them and gave Salt tears and ashes for their food ; They laboured by an open grave And won of Death their livelihood. xxxib Man's scanty title to the sun Imports the better right to die ; And round and round the World would run, Though all the streams of Art were dry. Cease, music, painting, sculpture, rhyme ! Go, take to huckstering instead ! Either degenerate is the time, Or ye are weaker than the dead ! 72 Then to the source of Art proceed ; Burn all the Sacred Books; spare none Except the Hymnal and the Creed, And Forty Articles, save one ! Blot out the monuments of Greece, The Roman and the Florentine ; Still would the shepherd wear the fleece, The butcher still sit down to dine ! Still would the World go round and round, And poets that despise their art Could tend the flocks or till the ground, Or hawk in Thespis' apple-cart ! For better far to beg or dig (Though bards are beggars all, for praise) Than underneath the vine or fig To fashion unbelieving lays ; 74 And, doomed to odious labour, spin Songs without faith in song ; or chase A Muse not " glorious within," A painted doll, with double face ! A creature of enamelled phrase, The darling of a dalliant throng ; An idle song of empty days, Made emptier by an idle song. 75 The public is the judge, you say. Now God forbid ! . . . Unless ye choose That fools should judge you, rather they Are judged by all the joy they lose. Bread must ye win ; but none can live, Save public tools, by bread alone : There is a Soul that clamours cc Give " ! Ye surely will not give a stone ? Feed your own soul and ye shall feed The World's, the mind of honest men Not those who turn the cranks of greed In Mammon's pestilential den, And issuing forth, with jaded wit, For recreation seek the schools Of charlatans ; unfew, unfit, The public fools, the public fools ! 77 xxxbii I see Humanity as one Scarce adolescent Soul, that grows By seasons of no moon or sun, Nor destined to a senile close: From age to age still journeying on To God, who evermore recedes, He hears, before, a benison ; Behind, he hears the crash of creeds ; And casting off the worthless type, Though never quite exempt from clay, Becomes, with less corruption ripe, And grows mature, with less decay ; Till, mergent into happier state And nobler place than heaven or hell, Though never wholly consummate, He justifies the primal Spell. 79 xxxbiii And Love I see, a weanling child, Kept by a sad, salacious crew In bondage ; ridiculed, reviled For antics he is taught to do. To fuller stature he shall grow And cast away his childish things, His quiver and his puny bow, His arrows and pretended wings ; That he may win his realm and throne From Lust, the tyrant, who by wrong Usurps those instincts that alone To Love's prerogative belong. For though he be a weanling child, In him the worlds of soul and sense Are destined to be reconciled ; But aeons hence, and aeons hence ! 81 xxxix Why preach profanity so great, Of Revelation standing still, And all of Man determinate, Save Science, grinding at her mill ? Of doom ordained two thousand years, That yet with God's connivance floats Suspensively, till Satan rears His proper complement of goats ? 82 This Human Soul for ever grows ; This creature out of God's own hands Is dowered with fierce inherent throes To burst Religion's swaddling-bands 5 And that confusion, Love miscalled, The narrow cell in which he lies, Shall be unraftered and unwalled, And made commensurate with the skies. G 2 si Ye boast of Science. . , . Has it touched The heart of man, or woman's mind ? Or is the poor old World as crutched AS ever, and as deaf and blind ? Besotted with the frantic fear Of poverty and crazed with greed, To buy men cheap and sell them dear Is all his Gospel, all his Creed 5 From battle-field to battle-field He limps along his bloody way, In vain by all the Past appealed And sightless of the coming Day ; The subtlest instruments designed By Science leave his spirit rude ; He worships still, in savage kind, His Fetish, Family, and Feud. xli As if the clock should mock the dial, Though puppet of the self-same sun, Young Science scorns thy wise denial Of purpose purposeless begun : Let him not vex thee ; have no fear, Pale priestess of the trine tiar ! Not hence thy danger. One is here, A worthier foe and greater far ! 86 A maid not palace-reared is she, But born "in huts where poor men lie"; There first she wrought her wizardry, Her commerce with the earth and sky. Not hers to force the gates of heaven, And, entering in, defile the fane ; She labours with a secret leaven Among thy measured meal of pain ! Among the porticoes she walks, And marts " where men do congregate," And there to lowly minds she talks Of those who " leave their first estate " : Their first estate of joy they leave, So pure, impassioned, and elate, And learn from Piety to grieve Because their hearts are passionate; 88 I UNIVERSITY \ } OF Jr ^ Or else, beside their natural wits, They fly where Piety has shown The painted actress Folly sits Upon her tawdry, tinselled throne ; Cloyed with her lavish, cold caress, To Piety they turn again, The unintending procuress To Folly and to Folly's pain. So Art, the true Hypatia, speaks Of Love, with no uncertain tongue, As erst she spoke to Jews and Greeks, As erst in Rome and Florence sung. The secret hearts of men she fills With such unlicensed thought, I swear Saint Peter hates her; from his hills Would flash and slay her, if he dare ! 90 Too late he grieves his Books contain The cry of Love and human wrongs, Job's Epic of immortal pain And Solomon's Mask, the Song of Songs. Art wrote the volume in his hand ; Himself by Art is crowned and shod ; And yet he cannot understand Art also is the Word of God. 9 1 ilib Nay, rather, can he read at all The sacred tidings clearly writ For those who have not lost, in thrall Of maddened fear, their mother wit ? It runs from Genesis to John, Nor even then the message trips; To Maccabees it journeys on ; One orbit of apocalypse ! 92 For as men deemed the shining sphere Was almost in their hand's assay, Till drawn by lens and crystal near, It proved a billion leagues away, So Revelation, once supposed The earthly footsteps of a God, Is clearer seen, yet less enclosed, Ip every place that Man has trod. 93 Is Man not marvellous enough ? Why will he ever seek, behind The soul that God has clothed with slough, The breath of more mysterious wind ?* He clambers to the lonely peaks, He drifts about the lonelier sea, To hear what Revelation speaks Beneath the night's immensity j 94 He strives to pierce the outer dark Wherein the Soul and Sense divide ; But God has set his barrier mark,? Lest either pass from side to side. The gamut of himself replies, Of love that knows, of lust that fears ; The hate of truth, the hate of lies ; The hope of joy, the sense of tears. 95 slirt The great procession lags along, With scarlet copes and smouldering fires, With banners raised and sacred song That Gregory stole from Grecian lyres. Vicars of God, who judge the soul Eternally to bask or burn, Who read creation like a scroll, Nor e'en of God have much to learn, The fulness of your day has been ! The savour of the salt is lost ! For lewder men have far foreseen A greater Feast of Pentecost. Yet no miraculous device Shall touch your altars to their shame ; The frequent daylight shall suffice, The common sun shall quench the flame. 97 H a-lim The colours melt from shade to shade, From tint to tint, a gorgeous cope ; A purple pattern of brocade ; The vestment of a Chinese pope. A patch across the midst is sewn, Conspicuous, yet of like degree ; By this the wearer may be known To keep his vow of poverty ! All Christian nations ought to wear That pretty emblematic coat, With pretty emblematic tear, For conscience-clause and saving note ! Hang up a skull of beaten gold Above the feast ! The words are dead Of One for thirty shekels sold, Who had not where to lay his head. 99 H 2 siimt With gamblers' faces weird and wild We press to hear new prophets preach ; Yet folded, docketed, and filed, How soon their most prophetic speech ! The labels wait me, ready penned,^ Partitioned shelf and lacquered box ! Free-thinker " and " Free-lover " end The list begun " Unorthodox/ 5 100 " Free-thinker ? " Yes ; if thought be free Envassalled to the laws of thought ! "Free-lover?" Yes; because to me All other loves than one are nought ! Old Dagon from his column slips Dislodged by no man ; and I tire Of Evolution on the lips That advertise their own desire. 101 Apologists for God, descant No more upon his ways to Man ! First justify the sycophant To God who made him if ye can. There is no blasphemy, but one, Of servile souls, who question not; Who think by favouring God to shun Perdition. This is unforgot ; 102 This is recorded. Happy they, If God rebuke them ; like the friends Reiterant, of Job ; nor slay, Nor bring them to untimely ends ! Because they speak the thing abhorred By honest tyrants ; speak, for fear, Like slaves in presence of their lord, The tale they deem he lusts to hear. 103 I I close : and yet I have not said The things I give my life to say. O subtle tint ! O subtler shade ! O glory still so far away ! But not of sunset ; no ! more white, More solemn, o'er the World's dark hill Bosoms the tide of living light, Of perfect Passion, perfect Will ! 104 When God our captive sight redeems From old Religion's prismic spell, That combs the sunshine into beams And separate hues of heaven and hell ; i When all the signets are unsealed, Each after each, and Love, the last, In robes of wisdom is revealed, Amid the foil of folly past. 105 NOTE ONE or two words occur in the quatrains that are not to be found in dictionaries, and several quotations that are not verbally exact and are, therefore, not placed in inverted commas. 107 VOSfMS BY F. B. MONEY COUTTS Crown 8