THE EPIC OF GOD AND 
 THE DEVIL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN FREDERICK ROWBOTHAM, 
 M.A., OXON. 
 
 AUTHOR OF THE HUMAN EPIC, THE EPIC OF LONDON, 
 
 THE E.PIC OF CHARLEMAGNE, THE HISTORY OF Music, 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE TROUBADOURS. 
 
 Written 1904-1906. 
 
 E. BAVLIS & SON, 
 
 22, THE CROSS, 
 
 WORCESTER.
 
 To 
 
 WILLIAM HUME HUME, ESQ., D.L., 
 of HumeTvood, Co. Wicklow. 
 
 Friend, to broad acres adding wit and worth, 
 Learning- and taste, and skill of music gay, 
 To whom more aptly out of all the earth 
 Than unto thee could I inscribe my lay? 
 Of all things earthly thou hast made essay, 
 Hast plumbed the depths where human passions rage, 
 And to all states thy sympathy canst pay ; 
 In life a dreamer, but in thought a sage. 
 Let my mysterious song thy fancies deep engage.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. GOD AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 Page 
 
 THE PROPOSITION ... i 
 
 THE INVOCATION ... ... ... ... ... i 
 
 THE FABLE. PART I. GOD AND THE DEVIL ... i 
 
 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE DEVIL ... ... 4 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A HOSPITAL ... ... ... 7 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A RAILWAY ACCIDENT ... ... 8 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A MURDER ... ... .. ... 9 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A FIRE ... ... ... ... ... n 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SHIPWRECK ... ... ... ... 13 
 
 THE DEVIL ON A BATTLEFIELD ... ... ... 15 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SEAFIGHT ... ... ... ... 17 
 
 THE DEVIL IN DRINK ... ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 THE DEVIL AT PROSTITUTION ... ... ... ... 21 
 
 THE DEVIL AT CRIME ... ... ... ... ... 25 
 
 THE DEVIL IN POVERTY ... ... ... ... 27 
 
 THE DEVIL ON A CATTLESHIP ... ... ... ... 29 
 
 THE DEVIL IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE ... ... ... 30 
 
 THE DEVIL AT VIVISECTION ... ... ... ... 32 
 
 THE DEVIL AS A FISHERMAN ... ... ... ... 34 
 
 THE DEVIL AS SPORTSMAN ... ... ... ... 36 
 
 2107633
 
 iv. CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GOD AND 
 
 THE DEVIL. 
 
 Page 
 
 INTRODUCTION ... ... ... ... ... ... 39 
 
 THE PREPARATIONS IN HELL ... ... ... ... 41 
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS ... 42 
 
 THE ASSAULT ON THE SEVENTY THOUSAND HEAVENS... 53 
 
 THE AGONY OF GOD 58 
 
 PART III. THE THEOGONY, OR THE GENEALOGY 
 OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF THE DEVIL AND OF GOD ... ... 60 
 
 THE BIRTH OF GOD FROM CHAOS ... .. ... 60 
 
 THE ILLUMINATION OF HALF THE UNIVERSE 61 
 
 THE CONFUSION OF SATAN ... ... ... ... 61 
 
 HE SEEKS HIS ABODE IN HELL ... ... ... ... 63 
 
 AFTER STORMING INEFFECTUALLY THE SEVENTY THOU- 
 SAND HEAVENS, SATAN'S FALL TO THE LOWEST 
 
 DEPTHS OF HELL ... ... ... ... 64 
 
 HE BLIGHTS AND BLASTS THE YOUNG WORLD MADE BY 
 
 GOD 65 
 
 HE ASSAILS JESUS CHRIST WITH TEMPTATIONS, FORCE, 
 
 AND FRAUD ... ... ... . ... ... 65 
 
 THE CRUCIFIXION ... ... ... ... ... 67 
 
 THE FIRST EASTER DAY ... ... ... ... 68 
 
 SATAN'S DECLARATION OF THE PATERNITY ... ... 70 
 
 THE DEVIL'S OFFER TO us ... ... ... ... 71 
 
 GOD'S OFFER TO us ... ... ... ... ... 72 
 
 WHO AND WHAT IS GOD 72 
 
 GOD'S DECLARATION OF THE PATERNITY ... ... 73 
 
 WHERE WE CAN SEE GOD 74 
 
 WHAT AND WHERE is HEAVEN ... ... ... 76 
 
 THE FINAL CHOICE ... 76
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND 
 THE DEVIL 
 
 PART I. 
 GOD AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 One is eternal, everlasting, great, 
 Fair as the sunbeams, shining as a star, 
 Celestial, of essence uncreate, 
 Sustaining all things that created are, 
 Upholding wide existence nigh and far ; 
 With perfect beauty, endless love endued, 
 With nought his smiling loveliness to mar, 
 Incomparably merciful and good, 
 
 Existing in serene, complete beatitude. 
 And One is ugly, hideous to dismay, 
 Rotten and lazarlike, with claws that kill, 
 Teeming with foul corruption and decay, 
 With cankers, poisons, blights and all things ill, 
 Raging with passions, filled with wicked will, 
 Yet baulked and baffled, racked by ill success, 
 Which doth his brow with myriad wrinkles fill ; 
 Blasted with disappointment, rottenness, 
 
 Squalor, disease, dirt, filth, and pitiful distress. 
 Great Zoroaster, to a listening world 
 These sacred mysteries who hast revealed, 
 And from the web of Nature hast unfurled 
 Things secret, from the eye of sense concealed, 
 And but for thee to be for ever sealed 
 May I thy wisdom once again expound, 
 And may thy lore its lofty lessons yield, 
 Thy lore incontrovertible, profound, 
 
 On which with sure repose our hope, our faith, we found ! 
 From measureless eternity The Twain 
 Have been, and will for ageless time remain, 
 Kings of the Universe, their broad domain, 
 Which One destroys, the Other doth sustain. 
 Equal in power, they hold divided reign, 
 Waging eternal war and strife amain, 
 Which sets all Nature in convulsive pain. 
 Now one, now other doth the triumph gain, 
 
 And Nature quails in doubt which will the power maintain. 
 From measureless eternity The Two 
 Have striven in interminable fray. 
 Each act One did, the Other did undo;
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Each thing One placed, the Other dragged away ; 
 Each effort and each art One did essay 
 Forward to move upon his tranquil track, 
 The Other alway schemed to turn astray 
 And force with spiteful satisfaction back, 
 
 Prepared at every step with unforseen attack. 
 From his celestial essence, soft, serene, 
 God, mighty Ormuzd, (so the sage doth tell,) 
 Made lovely light to wrap the world in sheen. 
 Hereon the Devil, Ahriman the fell, 
 Sought with his machinations light to quell ; 
 And straight created darkness, cold and dread, 
 To blot out light with irresistless spell. 
 Whenever lovely light henceforth was shed, 
 
 Must darkness in its turn enshroud the heavens o'erhead. 
 Then God with vital and ambrosial breath 
 Breathed through the Universe the gift of life. 
 The Devil saw it, and invented death, 
 To wage with life an everlasting strife, 
 Destroying sweet existence like a knife, 
 Leaving it never scathless and at ease, 
 But harking up a persecution rife 
 With influences deadliest disease, 
 
 Famines and pestilence, and such fell things as these. 
 Then God, from his serene beatitude, 
 Took fragrant spices and aromas rare. 
 And through the sky in shower refreshing strewed. 
 Where'er they lighted, happiness was there,. 
 Joy was engendered and contentment fair. 
 The Devil straight created sorrow drear, 
 Racking anxiety, distress and care. 
 God made the radiance of a smile appear ; 
 
 The Devil then distilled from some foul well a tear. 
 God, in pursuance of a long thought plan, 
 Framed out of nothing this terrestrial globe, 
 Nature's fair centre and the home of man. 
 He spared no pains its surface to enrobe 
 With fairest tracery and verdant robe. 
 With plants and trees and herbage velvet green 
 He decked the sward, and clad the lovely globe : 
 The silver rivers and the sea serene 
 
 He spread ; and bathed its breast in warmth and sunny 
 
 sheen. 
 
 In pairs he made the animals of earth, 
 The plants in genus and exact degree. 
 To all things fresh and fair he offered birth 
 And plenteous nurture, meaning they should be 
 At peace and rest for all eternity. 
 Wherefore with endless care and thought he made 
 Th' eternal patterns of all things that be, 
 Which were in firm stability arrayed 
 
 And in complete perfection, as he had essayed.
 
 GOD AND THE DEVIL. 3 
 
 Then did he spread a carpet brave of flowers 
 All blooms that laugh and blossoms that entice 
 Smiled, smelt and hung in rainbow-tinted showers. 
 The happy world it was a Paradise, 
 Laid out in form symmetrical and nice. 
 And here, to give completion to his plan, 
 He placed his pearl of estimable price, 
 Him whom he loved and had created man, 
 
 To be the lord of all things that his eye could scan. 
 Perpetual day beamed o'er the lovely world, 
 And lighted with its ray land after land. 
 Perpetual sunshine from the blue unfurled 
 Blessed earth with endless summer mild and bland. 
 Perpetual life to all was at command, 
 For God in bounty did ordain it so. 
 Perpetual happiness went hand in hand 
 With all the other joys he did bestow. 
 
 His creatures nought but peace and innocence did know. 
 God viewed his fair creation with delight, 
 Pronounced it good, and, satisfied, gave way 
 To self-congratulation at the sight ; 
 When, happening to cast his eyes away 
 From the fair globe, he saw to his dismay, 
 At grisly depth below him many a mile, 
 Poised in mid air the Devil there he lay, 
 Covered with filth and with corruption vile. 
 
 Regarding his creation with sardonic smile. 
 
 Then God, reviewing the fair world once more, 
 Found it had changed untimely to the worse: 
 Where'er he placed a blessing just before. 
 The Devil now had introduced a curse, 
 Transforming all things to direct reverse, 
 Fair unto foul, and happiness to woe, 
 Strewing his evils through the universe. 
 Such changes had been wrought, 'twas altered so, 
 
 Almighty God his own creation scarce did know. 
 
 Where plants and flowers were spread in garden fair, 
 
 And in a sheet of rainbow blossoms lay, 
 
 The Devil had insinuated there 
 
 In every bloom the nucleus of decay. 
 
 Where wheat and corn lay waving in the day, 
 
 With tawny yellow wooing soft the eye, 
 
 The filthy Devil had contrived a way 
 
 With mildew and with rot to putrefy, 
 
 Spoiling the beauteous grain which round did laughing lie. 
 And where the herbs were budding and were rising 
 On green-tressed stems above the fruitful ground, 
 There his pernicious sorcery devising 
 He soon a means to vitiate them found, 
 And blast with blight their greenery around. 
 Where freshest fruit, delicious to the taste. 
 The bending trees with luscious clusters crowned,
 
 4 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 With envious malice and with eager haste 
 He spat the cankers on it, all its sweets to waste. 
 
 Where sun was shining and with warmth and balm 
 
 Bathing the earth, he introduced a chill 
 
 A chill so sudden, all things felt a qualm, 
 
 And throughout Nature ran a deadly thrill. 
 
 Next he invented hail, the corn to kill, 
 
 Delighting most when suddenly it came. 
 
 Rain did he down in icy drops distil ; 
 
 And frost, to pierce and probe the tenderest frame 
 This he invented too, to put God's works to shame. 
 
 And man, poor man ! Oh, what a crop of woes 
 
 The Devil launched to spoil his happiness! 
 
 What fell diseases, which in legions rose! 
 
 What sickness, suffering, sorrow and distress ! 
 
 What racking cares, which ceaselessly oppress 
 
 With hard anxiety his daily life ! 
 
 What vice, what foul corrupting wickedness! 
 
 And last, not least, that foe with terrors rife, 
 Dire death, which shears his sweet existence like a knife ! 
 
 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE DEVIL. 
 
 But we are men, and we may see them round us, 
 And know what foe is battling to confound us, 
 What foe oppresseth when we sit repining, 
 Our minds to dark despair inclining, 
 What foe distresseth when we languish grieving, 
 Causes of useless sorrow weaving. 
 What foe solicits us 
 To sins impure, 
 What monster visits us 
 With vengeance sure, 
 What fiend disgraces us, 
 What beast abases us, 
 When we give way to do his wicked will, 
 What foe seduces us, 
 Till he reduces us 
 
 With sin, crime, vice, our filthy souls to fill 
 It is the Devil, who can take all shape, 
 And his foul person so completely drape, 
 That he can oft the sharpest eyes escape. 
 Sometimes he melts into a brimming cup of wine, 
 
 Where the bubbles shine 
 The last fell cup, with reckless draught within 
 
 Which leads a man to do a sin. 
 Sometimes he turneth to a bag of gold, 
 
 For which is to be sold 
 Virtue or honour as its prize 
 Sometimes he masquerades in the disguise 
 Of a fair woman with sparkling eyes. 
 Sometimes he stalks a ruffian foul, 
 Stealing about 'neath midnight's cowl,
 
 THE METEMPSYCHOSIS OF THE DEVIL. 
 
 And bent on doing some fell deed of crime. 
 Time after time 
 Doth he so change. 
 With metempsychosis strange 
 The slippery snake! 
 And doth every form and feature take, 
 
 Bent to deceive, 
 Just as he cheated Eve, 
 By being other than he seems, 
 Cozening us with dreams 
 
 And false delusion 
 In bewildering profusion. 
 
 When he designed 
 To witch the mother of mankind, 
 
 And planned his first disgrace 
 
 On our poor race, 
 
 He entered Paradise when all were sleeping, 
 Like a black mist along the greensward creeping, 
 Creeping and stealing. 
 Its bad way feeling 
 Through the flowers and the trees 
 Of that garden of ease, 
 Through the angel band 
 Who as sentries stand, 
 With their glittering armour bright 
 With a dazzle of heavenly light, 
 Who everywhere were looking for their foe, 
 But never heeded, 
 As it proceeded, 
 That black mist slinking, sluggish and slow, 
 
 And let it go, 
 Oh, everlasting woe ! 
 O'er the lawns and the dales 
 And the amaranthine vales, 
 
 Till it passed out of sight 
 And had vanished quite. 
 But now the Devil insidiously creeping 
 Had come to the bower where Eve was sleeping, 
 And having finished his stealthy road 
 Changed to the figure of a toad, 
 And did himself on his small haunches rear 
 
 Close by her ear, 
 
 In which he poured all thoughts of ill. 
 Her innocent sweet mind to fill. 
 While thus engaged, two angels, made suspicious 
 
 Of his crafts pernicious, 
 Scouting the Paradise to detect him, 
 Found him where they least expect him. 
 And one of them, Ithuriel, going near, 
 
 Touched the fell toad with pointed spear. 
 Up started Satan, of the touch abhorrent, 
 Like a fiery torrent
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Springing to the sky. 
 As should a pile of powder lie, 
 
 And by spark be lighted, 
 The smutty grain, ignited, 
 Flares with a roar on high : 
 So, like some dire volcano launched to birth, 
 Satan ablaze filled heaven and earth. 
 But when Eve he tempted, 
 And his craft attempted, 
 Which hath wrought to all our race fell woe; 
 Such his disguise, 
 The sharpest eyes 
 
 Scarce would the King of Terrors know, 
 In figure of a snake. 
 Who through the brake 
 
 With rainbow-spangled scales its slippery way did ply, 
 With sheen of amethyst 
 And gold, that did persist 
 To. woo with changing hues the wondering eye. 
 W T hat marvel that such beauty 
 Did its duty, 
 And the eyes did blind 
 Of the mother of mankind, 
 Teaching her to eat 
 
 That morsel sweet, 
 
 Which left such death and devilry behind? 
 But when the apple slips 
 Within her ruby lips, 
 
 Lo! something dire within the piece was centred. 
 The snake to air had fled. 
 
 And in its stead 
 
 The Devil in the apple's self had entered. 
 And she with her own teeth devoured 
 Him. who of life and hope and virtue her deflowered. 
 Thus with change after change 
 
 Doth he range. 
 
 He and his bad angels, to deceive 
 Those whom they of life and hope bereave, 
 Changing to things most unexpected 
 And least to be detected. 
 'Tis not in horns and hoofs 
 Or scarlet Mephistopheleses we see proofs 
 
 Of the fiend's presence by us; 
 But in a thousand substances, 
 In which he penetrates with ease, 
 And seeks to cozen and defy us 
 As facile in the power to change 
 To figure strange, 
 
 As he 
 
 In the Arabian history. 
 
 Who first became a heron till the hawk pursued him, 
 And then a log until the woodman hewed him,
 
 THE METEMP.SYCHOSIS OF THE DEVIL. 
 
 And then a fish until the otter caught him, 
 
 And then a wolf until the wolf-hounds fought him, 
 
 And then a fire until the water quenched it, 
 
 With dashing deluge drenched it, 
 And then a heap of corn upon the plain, 
 Until a cock picked grain up after grain. 
 And, swallowing fast each seed upon the field, 
 Devoured the wizard where he lay concealed. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A HOSPITAL. 
 
 But not a mere magician, 
 Smit with the vain ambition 
 Our minds to craze 
 With fond amaze 
 At his prestigiations 
 And wondrous transformations, 
 But a dire beast iniquitous, 
 Almighty and ubiquitous, 
 Whose only joy 
 Is to destroy, 
 Who nought doth know 
 More sweet and pleasant 
 Than everlastingly be present 
 At human grief and human woe. 
 To gloat on agony, 
 Suffering dire to see, 
 In torture and excruciating pain to revel 
 
 Such the\;hief pleasure of the Devil. 
 Wherefore with glad grimace 
 He through a hospital most willingly doth pace, 
 Where he has sown the fevers and the sores, 
 The abscesses and ulcerous pores, 
 The sloughing tumours 
 Charged with humours, 
 The dropsies, cancers, that abound, 
 And bear such glorious fruit around. 
 'Tis an orchard of his own growing, 
 Which day by day he would be sowing ; 
 Wherefore he visits it with joy, 
 To reap his harvest, and destroy. 
 He passes through the beds, 
 Where toss the aching heads. 
 The clammy brow he laves 
 
 In waves 
 
 Of icy perspiration. 
 The features pale that languish, 
 He racks with ruts of anguish, 
 And views the piteous sight with exultation. 
 He sends the racking cough 
 To carry victims off, 
 And hears with joy befitting
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 The hawking and the spitting ; 
 And laughs at the poor lung, 
 With pain and straining wrung. 
 
 But his. dearest occupation 
 
 Is at an operation. 
 
 "Pis the joy of his bad life 
 When the cold-gleaming knife 
 
 Flashes bright 
 
 To the sight, 
 And the victim pale with fright 
 
 Utters yell after yell 
 
 At the agonies of hell. 
 
 In such a scene 
 
 He sits serene. 
 
 The shriek of fear 
 
 Is music to his ear. 
 The scream of pain 
 He would hear again. 
 
 And he silently laughs at his own bad plan, 
 And the havoc he makes with beautiful man. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A RAILWAY ACCIDENT. 
 
 An accident 
 Is a dear event, 
 In which the Devil 
 Loves to revel. 
 It gives him evermore 
 
 Scope for endless mockery and laughter 
 Both the scene before, 
 And the scene after: 
 
 The scene before, because he knows what's coming. 
 And he listens to the humming 
 And the bustle and the stir 
 
 Of the train at the station 
 With a secret exultation, 
 And of every passenger 
 He notes the destination, 
 Saying with complacent air, 
 That ne'er will one of them get there. 
 Off goes the engine with a whistle and a whiz ! 
 
 And the Devil at last knows that they all are his. 
 And he runs along the footboard, taking pains to keep them 
 
 in 
 
 For the hellish agonies and tortures which will soon begin. 
 And while the train is spinning, 
 Through the Iqmp-holes he is grinning, 
 Through the lamp-holes of the roof 
 Peeping in to have the proof 
 That the people are inside, 
 Little witting as they ride 
 Of the dire catastrophe, 
 
 That is soon to be.
 
 THE DEVIL AT A RAILWAY ACCIDENT. 
 
 And he rubs his hands with glee, 
 
 And after 
 
 Bursts into a shriek of diabolic laughter, 
 Which is fortunately drowned 
 By the engine's roaring sound, 
 And the rattle of the wheels, 
 As the train to its destruction steals. 
 Then sudden as a flash 
 Comes the crash 
 And the smash. 
 And the air is filled with yell, 
 And the carriages with hell. 
 And bodies crushed and limbs all mangled, 
 With the broken boards entangled, 
 Dire contusions, 
 Fell confusions, 
 Horrid groans, 
 Piteous moans, 
 
 Shrieks from those in phalanx serried 
 In splinters and in darkness buried 
 All makes a sight to turn thought dizzy 
 But the Devil he is busy 
 Presiding o'er this scene of woe, 
 Pacing fleetly to and fro, 
 Some scream of anguish to enjoy, 
 Some dying victim to annoy. 
 
 Drinking in 
 With his ears of sin 
 The tempest of yells, screams and cries, 
 Which from the wrecks of carriages arise. 
 And then when help arrives, the Devil 
 Oh! he is very civil, 
 Assisting into stretcher and chair 
 The mangled forms with obsequious care, 
 Oft covering them with decent sheet, 
 And thinking the while with rapture sweet 
 Of the faces crushed past recognition, 
 And other ghastly exhibition ; 
 Concealing his grin of exultation 
 Beneath a masterly affectation. 
 'Tis his hour of triumph vile 
 O'er man, whom he so long has hated ; 
 And he revels all the while 
 In the woe he has created. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A MURDER. 
 
 When murder is on the tapis, 
 Then the Devil is happy; 
 And he sniffs it far away, 
 And comes along with transport gay, 
 For any sake 
 To partake
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 In such a scene of blood and terror, 
 
 Sin and error, 
 As may not happen every day. 
 
 He sharpens the knife, 
 That is to take away the life ; 
 Or the poison doth prepare 
 With a world of care, 
 That courses through the blood, 
 And taints its wholesome flood 
 With a curdle chill, 
 Deathlike and still. 
 Where doth the Devil lurk, 
 When the murderer is at his work? 
 Perched on his shoulder, 
 Helping his arm, 
 Peering around in case of alarm, 
 That he may bolder 
 Wreak his fell harm. 
 'Tis a man no, a fiend ! 
 Who has purposed to slay 
 A girl young and fair, who on him has leaned, 
 By him has been ruined and hurried astray. 
 The Devil approves of the cause. 
 
 'Tis a reason, 
 Which to him and his laws 
 
 Seems entirely in season. 
 For, those who have trusted for you to betray, 
 And those who have loved you to pitiless slay 
 
 This is his creed ; 
 So he says to the man, 
 " Please, brother, proceed, 
 
 And as fast as you can." 
 So the murderer throttles the milkwhite throat, 
 And the Devil's black fingers close over his own. 
 And the murderer bashes her face with an oath, 
 And the Devil with ecstasy drinks in her groan. 
 Then the murderer draws the gleaming blade : 
 And the Devil asunder her dress doth tear, 
 Till her lovely bosom lies displayed, 
 
 White as alabaster fair. 
 
 Then the murderer plunges the bright knife in ; 
 And the Devil twists it round with a grin. 
 And the blood, red blood, 
 In a dirty flood 
 
 Comes slopping all her bosom white. 
 And the Devil laughs horribly at the sight. 
 And the woman screams; and the Devil's laughter, 
 Mixed with the screams, or immediately after, 
 
 Grows so loud, 
 That the man is cowed, 
 And desists from his work of mutilation. 
 
 For the Devil's obstreperous cachinnation
 
 THE DEVIL AT A MURDER. II 
 
 (Since, to finish the sport, he looks to the thought 
 Of having the murderer red-handed caught) 
 Alarms the neighbourhood and the night, 
 And the people wake up in dire affright. 
 And in window and window there gleams a light. 
 And the murderer panic-struck takes to flight 
 And makes his escape, just when a crowd, 
 Gesticulating and talking aloud, 
 Rattle the knocker, or the bell ring, 
 All too late their help to bring, 
 
 Then force the door, 
 And hurry over the blood-stained floor, 
 
 Holding their bated breath 
 When they enter the chamber of death. 
 Nought do they find, 
 No clue, 
 
 Nought left behind 
 To show who the crime did do 
 
 But only the dead, 
 
 With the murderer fled ; 
 
 And a sight, which their very sense doth stun, 
 Tells them a murder has been done. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A FIRE. 
 
 Fire! Fire! 
 What terror do the words inspire ! 
 
 Fire! Fire! Fire! 
 
 And there's none who hurries faster 
 To the scene of the disaster 
 Than the vile and grimy Devil, 
 Who looks to hold high revel 
 In the blazes and the flame, 
 To play a f pretty game 
 In the glare and the gleams, 
 While the conflagration steams. 
 And the burnt and falling beams 
 Scatter death and dire destruction, 
 While the flames up-licking flash 
 And portend the speedy crash 
 Of the fabric's whole construction. 
 But he on high above the bonfire stands. 
 
 Warming his hands, 
 
 Basking in the rays ; 
 
 And sees with joy the building crumbling 
 And all things tumbling 
 
 Into tne blaze. 
 Sometimes he stirs the conflagration, 
 
 Making it bright, 
 If it require some agitation 
 
 To keep it alight. 
 As one with poker stirring a fire,
 
 12 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PARTI. 
 
 Making the flames mount higher, 
 
 So the Devil stirs the fire, if it should die, 
 
 Making the flames leap up to the sky. 
 
 But specially does it elate him 
 
 And exhilarate him, 
 If human beings are burnt to cinder, 
 Their clothes scorched to tinder, 
 Their white flesh charred, 
 Their beautiful body marred 
 By the flames and the smoke. 
 This to him is a joke, 
 Which he loves dearly, 
 And looks upon merely 
 As a pleasant addition 
 To the genial exhibition. 
 If they shriek, he listens intent, 
 
 With one ear bent 
 To the blazes that roar. 
 If pent in a room, 
 Bathed in smoke and gloom, 
 They struggle for exit, he holds the door. 
 If they stumble suffocated, 
 
 He laughs elated. 
 If they escape at length 
 By herculean strength, 
 
 And rush through the fire with nothing o'er them, 
 He breaks the staircase down before them, 
 
 And leaves them to fry- 
 In agony, 
 
 Shrieking until their shrieks are drowned 
 In the universal blaze around. 
 Such is the revel 
 Of the Devil. 
 
 And, as you may presume, to-night 
 'Tis he who set the blaze alight, 
 Like some damned conspirator creeping 
 To the building, where all were sleeping, 
 
 And in the pitchy dark 
 
 Kindling the tiny spark 
 Which shall result in such a conflagration 
 And devilish illumination. 
 Then, when his train is laid, 
 Swooping off for the fire brigade, 
 Bidding them rescue poor folk from their fate, 
 Knowing that rescue will be too late ; 
 Giving the alarm, ringing the bell, 
 
 Gathering the crowd 
 
 With shouts aloud 
 To see a realisation of hell. 
 
 Then, when the awful sight 
 
 Imagination dazes, 
 
 Precipitating with delight
 
 THE DEVIL AT A FIRE. 13 
 
 Himself into the blazes, 
 
 And disappearing from mortal eyes, 
 
 With the poor sufferers to sympathise. 
 And at their ear in the raging fire 
 He plies persecutions that never tire ; 
 He bewilders and confuses them, 
 He maddens and abuses them, 
 
 With hopes of escape that are doomed to be bootless, 
 With chances of rescue all quite fruitless. 
 At last he drags them to the window screaming, 
 And shows them far beneath or are they dreaming ? 
 
 People with a great sheet outspread, 
 In which they must leap from overhead. 
 
 However high, it matters naught ; 
 Be sure, he whispers, they will be caught. 
 And one by one in wild despair 
 They take their flight through the blazing air. 
 And the Devil he too doth with them ride, 
 Sailing down through the air at their side, 
 To be with them where their journey ceases 
 That is, on the ground and dashed to pieces. 
 
 Meantime the few that yet remain, 
 
 Roasted with heat and racked with pain, 
 Afraid to leap, though fain 
 
 With one stamp he breaks in the flooring, 
 And precipitates them alive into the blazes roaring. 
 Thus does the Devil 
 Hold his revel 
 
 Amid the fire and furnace around, 
 For the fire is his empire, you may be bound. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SHIPWRECK. 
 
 Yet if his appetite for slaughter 
 Can be gratified by water, 
 
 Do not think 
 That he will shrink 
 From the enjoyment, 
 
 But with glee 
 
 Will wing his journey to the sea 
 In search of dire employment. 
 And oaring through the clouds 
 On sail-broad vans expanded 
 Will spy a ship with tattered shrouds 
 Upon a sandbank, stranded, 
 Doomed to perdition, 
 In hopeless position, 
 With timbers breaking 
 And ribs quaking. 
 
 All through its sides the wave 'tis drinking. 
 The gallant ship is nigh to sinking.
 
 14 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I 
 
 The Devil scents from far away 
 
 The smell of death, 
 And on he comes without delay, 
 Ne'er pausing to take breath. 
 He comes, to witness there 
 The incarnation of his fondest dreams. 
 The ship' is filled with yells and screams 
 
 And piteous despair. 
 'Tis a vessel where are many 
 Children and ladies, 
 Whom the Devil more than any 
 
 Likes to send to Hades. 
 Their screams are so refreshing to his ears ! 
 He loves to bathe his hands in women's tears, 
 
 To part their long hair from the face, 
 And view their grief with devilish grimace. 
 And here is a sample, 
 Where scope is ample. 
 Wherefore straight to the ladies' cabin, 
 
 Eager for ruin and rapine, 
 In he plunges, hideous and deform, 
 
 To find the place a very storm 
 Of shrieks and screams and wail, 
 
 And women deadly pale 
 
 Shrieking and raving and wringing their hands. 
 And in their midst with approval he stands, 
 Increasing their terror, 
 Confounding with error 
 Their every action, 
 
 And goading to madness and utter distraction. 
 Then he runs among the crew, 
 
 Seeking to undo 
 Whatever is for safety done. 
 This is his devilry and fun. 
 If a leak is plugged, 
 He unplugs it. 
 If a rope is tugged, 
 Then the other way he tugs it, 
 
 Getting the rigging in a tangle, 
 Involving the sailors in a wrangle. 
 
 Just at the hour 
 When they should be heedful, 
 And all in their power 
 Is verily needful, 
 If they the ship shall save 
 And all its passengers from watery grave. 
 Now comes the moment when the boat must founder 
 Amid the yeasty seas around her. 
 
 Now rises up in accents shrill 
 A wild farewell. 
 But louder, shriller still, 
 Is the Devil's mocking yell,
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SHIPWRECK. 15 
 
 Who sees fine sport awaiting him, 
 And crowds of horrors sating him, 
 When hundreds struggle in the wave, 
 Seeking escape from watery grave. 
 Quick as thought from ^par to spar 
 He skims the billows nigh and far, 
 And pushes down 
 With hideous frown 
 Each agonised face, 
 That for a space 
 Makes its pillow 
 On the billow. 
 
 What rapture lurks in this work of woe, 
 The Devil himself doth only know. 
 Those who have on wreckage crawled, 
 And sit there trembling and appalled, 
 With waves he splashes them, 
 
 Until he dashes them 
 Down in the churning trough of sea, 
 Where he grins in ecstasy 
 
 At their struggles bootless 
 And their frantic efforts fruitless 
 
 For breath and life 
 In the wild waves' strife. 
 Those who to planks and lifebuoys cling 
 Amid the waves round weltering, 
 
 He nothing lingers, 
 But unclasps their quivering fingers, 
 Then away doth snatch 
 The precious float at which they catch, 
 And plunges them quivering, 
 Cold and shivering, 
 Deep in the cold deep sea, 
 Where with ecstasy 
 Again and again he sees them rise, 
 And mops and mows at their imploring eyes. 
 
 Thus at a shipwreck every minute 
 The Devil turns to full employment, 
 And be sure he findeth in it 
 Excellent enjoyment. 
 
 THE DEVIL ON A BATTLEFIELD. 
 
 The day of doom, the day of danger 
 To this the Devil is no stranger. 
 But when the cannons belching spout 
 Their smoke and flames in volumes out, 
 He is in the gloom 
 Apportioning doom, 
 Dealing death, 
 Stifling breath, 
 Blasting life
 
 1 6 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 With murderous strife, 
 
 Blood distilling, 
 The field with wounds and tortures filling, 
 
 His appetite glutting 
 With butcheries fell, 
 Cutting and killing, 
 Killing and cutting, 
 Cutting and killing and sending to hell. 
 Great joy he ever hath displayed 
 In the murderous fusilade, 
 
 In which, as he has often reckoned, 
 A dozen men may fall a second, 
 
 And a dozen more 
 May be disfigured and wounded sore. 
 
 Such slaughter quick 
 Suits the Devil's arithmetic. 
 In the short space of but one hour 
 What horrors lie within his power ! 
 Tortures baneful, 
 Sufferings painful, 
 Mutilations past the name 
 Of this fair fleshly frame 
 Ripped and dismembered oft, 
 Its cartilages soft 
 Torn and bleeding, 
 Its bones' precise anatomy 
 And linked symmetry, 
 By blow unheeding 
 
 Crushed into mummy, mashed and torn. 
 And all these horrors to be borne 
 'Mid the smoke of the battle, 
 And the musketry's rattle. 
 And the scream of the shell 
 On its errand so fell, 
 And the ping of the rifles, 
 And the heat and the dust which the gasping breath 
 
 stifles ! 
 
 Helpless to lie 
 In agony, 
 
 'Mid trampling horses 
 And resistless forces, 
 And deafening roar 
 Of shells hurtling the heaven o'er, 
 Expecting every minute that is passed 
 
 To be their last, 
 From squadrons thundering nigh 
 And cannons rumbling by 
 And regiments marching 
 The battle and its revel 
 Is the carnival of the Devil. 
 For as there the wretched wounded lie, 
 With dry lips parching,
 
 THE DEVIL ON A BATTLEFIELD. 17 
 
 Praying only but to die, 
 He leaves them not alone, 
 But, drinking in each groan, 
 
 He comes near 
 And sits at their ear, 
 Whispering thoughts of home, 
 
 To which they ne'er may come, 
 Raising the images of those they cherish 
 
 Before their eyes, 
 Far from whom they e'en must perish 
 
 In untold agonies, 
 Making the torments of their moments last 
 
 More tremendous 
 
 Than all the woes a mortal e'er has passed 
 Most stupendous. 
 And moreover, 
 When the fight is over, 
 He leaves them not alone ; 
 But if they linger in their pain 
 Heaving many a groan 
 On the plain, 
 
 He comes in human shape and the disguise 
 Of ruffian plunderer or worse, 
 And ere the wounded hero dies, 
 
 Stabs him with a curse, 
 Or throttling him he tightens 
 
 His fleeting breath, 
 And tenfold heightens 
 The agonies of death. 
 Such are the scenes of a bed of glory, 
 
 Such a battle's story. 
 And Patriotism, Honour, Duty, 
 
 Are all the Devil's booty, 
 Which he reaps with a scowl and a frown 
 In the eve when the sun has gone down. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SEAFIGHT. 
 
 Of horrors dire, tremendous, 
 
 Most, most stupendous 
 Are those which in the battle on the wave 
 
 Send mortals to a bloody grave, 
 A bloody grave most pitiful, since dire explosion 
 On the wild ocean 
 The poor shape shatters, 
 And rends this artful frame to tatters, 
 Casting it about in pieces 
 Amid a roar that never ceases 
 Of great guns, deep-voiced and sonorous, 
 And yelling shells, the treble of the chorus, 
 And springing mines, whose hidden womb 
 Scatters appalling death and doom. . 
 Amid this scene of smoke and thunder
 
 1 8 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PARTI. 
 
 The Devil stands, 
 Rubbing his hands, 
 Exhilarated by the sight 
 Of the poor limbs torn asunder 
 And other spectacles of dire affright. 
 And as he looms presiding o'er the storm, 
 Enveloped in the crash, 
 With his fantastic form 
 Lit up by the fires that flash, 
 He looks like a phantom admiral malign 
 Guiding the operations. 
 
 Conjuring by word and sign 
 The deathly devastations. 
 And as an admiral, is he dressed, 
 With brass buttons on his vest, 
 
 And cocked hat and sash, 
 And sabre dangling with a clash. 
 Some'times a flag he seizes, 
 And waving it amid the breezes 
 
 Above the battle gory, 
 Shouts " Hey, boys, Death and Glory ! " 
 And at this moment an explosion dire, 
 Lit by a torpedo's deadly fire, 
 Hurls up a battleship 
 In splinters to the sky. 
 Hundreds of men to fragments it doth rip ; 
 Of poor mortality a very rain doth fly. 
 " Death and Glory ! " shrieks the Devil 
 
 At this crisis of the revel. 
 " 'Twill be hard to make selection 
 Of these fragments at the Resurrection." 
 Thus doth he sneer. 
 And thus doth jeer 
 
 With wild delight. 
 
 But time is precious ; and next minute, 
 If strife has slackened, with new rage he doth begin it, 
 And stir to orgies horrible the fight. 
 Bang go the guns ! Crash go the vessels ! 
 One ship is rammed, and madly wrestles, 
 Like victim writhing round the knife, 
 
 For its life. 
 But 'tis in vain! Down, down it goes 
 
 'Mid cyclopean throes, 
 
 With seven hundred men on board, who sink or swim 
 Meanwhile the Devil with humour grim 
 Scrutinises their struggles dire. 
 The next ship he sets on fire. 
 
 For a change. 
 Thus doth he range 
 
 Through dreadnought, battleship, torpedo-boat, 
 Destroyer, cruiser, all that are afloat, 
 Urging the gunners to fresh exertion,
 
 THE DEVIL AT A SEAFIGHT. 1 9 
 
 Driving the dazed marines to deeds of dread despair, 
 Torturing the wretched wounded as a dear diversion, 
 Spreading bewilderment and panic everywhere. 
 Two hundred guns belch through the reeking air 
 
 Smoke, flame, and death. 
 
 And men are disembowelled, torn to pieces in derision, 
 A thousand in a breath 
 
 Sent to perdition, 
 
 The race annihilated sheer those there who be, 
 (" So would I could annihilate them all !" saith he.) 
 
 Believe me, gentry of the world, no revel 
 Is more delectable to the Devil, 
 
 No pastime to his taste more sweet, 
 Than set him tampering with a Fleet. 
 
 THE DEVIL IN DRINK. 
 
 'Tis said the Devil loves his tipple, 
 
 And that in Hell 
 Is heard the everlasting- ripple 
 Of brandy, whisky, gin, and other strong potations, 
 
 Which drunkards love so well ; 
 That one of his main occupations 
 Is with his devils 
 To hold high revels 
 Sitting amid the dark, 
 Lit only with the sulphurous spark, 
 Drinking and noisily carousing, 
 All Hell with staves and drinking-catches rousing. 
 Wherefore most willingly he shares the mirth 
 Of drinking bouts and drinking on the earth. 
 
 And 'tis his whim 
 Always to be a member of the party, 
 
 Sociable and hearty. 
 Always there's a glass for him. 
 Have you never observed his vacant place, 
 
 As there you sit sipping, 
 Down your throat the liquor slipping? 
 Have you never seen his foul grimace, 
 As his glass he lifts up, 
 Tossing off a cup ; 
 Sometimes drinking to your health, 
 
 Wishing you wealth 
 (And all the time damnation) ? 
 'Tis his pet recreation 
 To watch you keenly, and be ever ready 
 For the moment when your head becomes unsteady. 
 
 Then, fatal hour ! 
 You are in his power ; 
 And forthwith he never ceases 
 
 To use you 
 And abuse you
 
 20 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 As he pleases. 
 
 Out in the night 
 He drives you blind and drunk, 
 To reel, to rave, to hiccup, curse, and fight ; 
 Or, in dead bestial torpor sunk, 
 To stumble in the gutter, 
 
 And there lie 
 In misery utter 
 And pitiable infamy. 
 But the Devil has better scope 
 
 And dearer hope, 
 When he can cultivate a craving, 
 So that you must have drink 
 At stated times a day, 
 
 Or else go raving. 
 And if you rave in dire delirium, 
 
 They say 
 
 The Devil doth in his own person come, 
 And show himself to your distracted eyes, 
 As a Devil blue, 
 Cerulean of hue, 
 
 Or as Beelzebub, the king of flies, 
 Making flies buz round you, 
 And gnats and wasps confound you, 
 Till your poor brain doth reel, 
 
 And you feel 
 
 Such misery that even Hell 
 Can find to it no parallel. 
 With distempered fancies 
 Your tortures he enhances, 
 And teaches you by their reiteration 
 No foe so dire as the imagination ; 
 No agonies of body and no pains 
 So cruel as the pangs of tortured brains. 
 
 And you must drink, 
 To make you cease to think. 
 And then to still your pain, 
 You must drink again ; 
 
 Until you drain 
 
 Cup after cup, and glass by glass, 
 While hours fly and days do pass. 
 
 Then comes the fearful night, 
 Which you look forward to with dire affright. 
 
 " Oh ! for God's sake 
 Let me not lie awake ! " 
 
 You cry despairing. 
 " Let me not know those agonies so wearing, 
 
 And the Devil tearing 
 My very heart out with his crooked nails, 
 Pestering my pillow with a storm of terrors, 
 Making me languish 
 In sleepless anguish
 
 THE DEVIL IN DRINK. 21 
 
 At long- past errors, 
 To rectify which nothing now avails." 
 
 Meanwhile the room 
 Is full of phantoms peopling the gloom, 
 Spectres horrible and fell, 
 
 Coming hot from hell, 
 
 Who close around to choke you or to throttle, 
 Till you stagger to your legs 
 
 And seize the bottle, 
 Draining it unto its dreg's. 
 Then perchance you feverishly sleep ; 
 
 But your sleep is populated 
 With the same crew of apparitions hated 
 Who your poor mind in horrors steep, 
 And give you awful dreams, 
 Till the sweet morning light 
 Whitens the night, 
 Pierces the gloom, 
 And enters your room 
 With its silver ray 
 Announcing the happy day 
 To others happy, but not to you, 
 For you in your day find nought to do, 
 But drink and tipple, tipple and drink, 
 Till reeling and hiccuping home you slink, 
 And prepare for another night again, 
 Another night of terror and pain. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT PROSTITUTION. 
 
 But of all things at which he tries his hand, 
 The Devil best 
 Doth understand 
 Prostitution. 
 'Tis an institution 
 In which he takes the deepest interest. 
 
 He has founded it 
 In times of great antiquity. 
 
 He has grounded it 
 
 Upon our inborn inclination to iniquity. 
 And of his fell devices none so well 
 Sends millions of poor souls to blazing hell. 
 
 In the execution 
 Of the art and science of prostitution 
 
 The Devil is adept, well versed 
 In every step of the iniquity accursed, 
 From its first shy introduction, 
 
 As Seduction, 
 
 To its dire end and devilish undoing, 
 As total Wreck and utter Ruin. 
 All the arts he knoweth well 
 He sits inventing them in hell
 
 22 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 And puts them into practice every day, 
 Teaching- men to cozen and betray, 
 (He knows the lecherous 
 Are ever treacherous) 
 
 Showing- them how most astutely to beguile 
 With base and wanton wile 
 
 Each unsuspecting girl 
 With many a sunny curl, 
 
 Converting her into a hag diseased and dirty, 
 Before she's anything like thirty. 
 From the ravishing bliss 
 Of the first kiss, 
 The Devil is in it, 
 Busy every minute, 
 And surely, most surely, 
 
 Though she bear herself however so demurely, 
 The blushing- maiden 
 With scruples laden, 
 
 Too coy 
 To fondle and to toy, 
 
 And so pretty 
 She would wake to pity 
 Any but a heart of stone 
 Becomes at last the Devil's own. 
 Little by little and hour by hour 
 He gets her more completely in his power, 
 
 In love her lapping, 
 His snaky self around her wrapping. 
 'Tis his delight 
 To clasp her tight, 
 Winding round her waist 
 Once so chaste. 
 Now he becomes a necklace of bright gold, 
 
 Slippery and cold, 
 
 And round her neck and on her bosom bare, 
 Oh ! pillow soft and fair, 
 
 He lieth ; . 
 While she dieth, 
 And giveth freely to her lover 
 What she will nevermore recover. 
 Now he becomes a ring 
 'Tis a little thing, 
 
 But most effective 
 For the purpose in prospective, 
 And does amazing execution 
 In the sphere of prostitution. 
 You can put it on, 
 Till the deed is done 
 
 " Then," quoth the Devil with a jibe profane, 
 " You easily can slip it off again." 
 Now he transforms himself into a dress, 
 And doth her lovely body all possess ;
 
 THE DEVIL AT PROSTITUTION. 23 
 
 Like Nessus' robe which Hercules enwrapped, 
 And in foul fire his mighty body lapped : 
 
 So this fair dress 
 
 Of milkwhite lustre, chiffon, creamy lace, 
 Which doth like floss or feathers her embrace, 
 Wraps her round to her distress, 
 And tears her, 
 And wears her, 
 And scarifies her skin, 
 
 Burning" its way in 
 To her fair flesh, her very bone, 
 Giving cause for many a moan. 
 It is the offering of a lover gay, 
 Who would gorge himself upon her beauty, 
 Without th' attendant duty 
 Of marriage serious 
 And mysterious ; 
 
 And for the pleasure wants to pay. 
 And if she doth her body sell 
 
 To his desire, 
 
 The robe consumes her like a fire, 
 And in his arms she feels the pains of hell. 
 Yet she will sell herself, be sure : 
 The Devil is resistless to allure. 
 Then the Devil with delight will melt 
 Into a silver belt, 
 And clasp her waist 
 
 Unchaste, 
 Now his domain, 
 And never hers again. 
 
 Then he becomes a brooch upon her neck ; 
 Then earrings in her ear, each with a diamond 
 
 speck ; 
 Then a gold chain, which round 
 
 Her throat is wound, 
 And twines about with many turnings ; 
 And then a pretty purse, in which to put her 
 
 earnings 
 
 But by this time the Devil has got tired. 
 He has accomplished all he had desired ; 
 And now prepares to hand his little leman 
 To his familiar and inferior demons. 
 They seize her and to many men they give her. 
 Perhaps it costs her at the first a shiver. 
 But she gets accustomed soon 
 To lovers as inconstant as the moon ; 
 And when she takes in due time to the streets, 
 She makes a friend of every man she meets. 
 'Tis then she is in Hell at last 
 Before her time. The Devil has her fast. 
 And every visitor 
 Who doth solicit her
 
 24 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Makes the matter worse, 
 And aggravates the curse 
 Of vileness, filth, and foul disease, 
 Which doth her very vitals seize. 
 
 Her master, 
 
 Who has led her on to this disaster, 
 Is delighted at its termination ; 
 
 And to her damnation, 
 Out of the joy to be her lord and owner, 
 Often comes to visit her in propria persona. 
 'Tis true she knows it not. 
 And yet if she did wot, 
 Such curious bedfellows she oft hath had, 
 
 Both good and bad, 
 Nothing would her now surprise. 
 Yet out of charity let us surmise 
 Her wholly ignorant of what occurs. 
 
 The fault's not hers. 
 The stranger who solicits her, 
 And in her chamber visits her, 
 She thinks him a gentleman gay and civil, 
 But in truth she copulates with the Devil. 
 And what he^leaves behind 
 
 Poisons not her mind, 
 But her fair body whole ; 
 
 As long ago 
 
 When first he kissed her, 
 He did blister 
 Her white soul. 
 Oh woe ! oh woe ! 
 The fell disease, the fester, 
 Which her shapely frame doth pester, 
 Making it lazarlike and rotten, 
 Like some imposthume misbegotten, 
 Sapping her strength 
 Until at length 
 
 She scarce can lift her limbs 
 Such corruption in them swims. 
 And all the while 
 She must pursue 
 Her calling vile 
 Which she doth rue, 
 Staggering out at night 
 In the misty light, 
 Men to coax 
 Into her arms, 
 And to hoax 
 With haggard charms 
 And slavering kiss. 
 A mass of foul disease she is, 
 Repulsive to the sight and to the smell, 
 Ready for Hell.
 
 THE DEVIL AT PROSTITUTION. 25 
 
 And so her rottenness increases, 
 Till she rots and falls in pieces 
 And the Devil laughs exulting, with a la 
 
 And the Devil laughs exulting", with a laugh that 
 never ceases. 
 
 THE DEVIL AT CRIME. 
 
 His black majesty delights to pass his time 
 With thieves and criminals and their fraternity, 
 To aid them and abet them in their crime, 
 And then to damn them all to all eternity. 
 Robbers and burglars, pickpockets and thieves, 
 Cut-throats and ruffians, coiners and their gang 
 Such company reluctantly he leaves, 
 
 Never without a pang 
 Garotters, welshers, hooligans and cheats, 
 Bullies and footpads who infest the streets, 
 Cardsharpers, smashers, swindlers, housebreakers, 
 Forgers and poisoners and murderers 
 Fain is he evermore to spend his time 
 Amid these master-knaves and graduates of crime. 
 He sits amid them intently listening 
 To what they may propose, 
 His left eye gently glistening, 
 His finger on his nose. 
 
 He holds a court, 
 Whereto they may resort, 
 
 And discuss 
 Without unnecessary fuss 
 
 In terms precise 
 
 With the full benefit of his advice 
 Their plan of guilt, 
 Their deed of sin, 
 What blood is to be spilt, 
 What houses broken in, 
 What watches grabbed, 
 What silver nabbed, 
 What wayfarers attacked, 
 What kens are to be cracked, 
 What locks picked, 
 What windows snicked, 
 
 What jewellers' gutted, 
 What avarice glutted, 
 
 And the swag 
 To become the slag 
 Of the dire melting-pot, 
 Which in the Devil's kitchen, 
 With simmer most bewitching, 
 Perpetually doth boil, 
 
 Bubbling hot. 
 
 'Tis the goal of all their toil, 
 Where watches, rings, chains, trinkets, lockets,
 
 26 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 The spoil of caskets, safes, and pockets, 
 In indistinguishable hodge-podge roar, 
 With thieves around and cut-throats bending o'er. 
 Their villain looks, black as the Devil's himself, 
 As they behold their precious pelf 
 In the cauldron boil, 
 Bespeak them ready for a broil, 
 Fain in a trice the whole fell swag to grab, 
 And for the precious prize their dearest " pal " to stab. 
 
 In the coiners' den 
 The Devil oft his hours doth wile 
 
 In their den, 
 Their faking-ken, 
 Where with battery and phial 
 They cast their mintage vile. 
 He approves of the smashers' preparation, 
 But still more of its circulation ; 
 And he scatters the base pieces 
 In a shower that never ceases, 
 Being particularly cheerful 
 
 When they come into the hands of some poor widows 
 tearful, 
 
 Or the poor, or of any 
 Who can ill afford to lose a penny. 
 Their consternation, 
 Their fruitless agitation, 
 Give him unspeakable delight. 
 But for wreaking of his spite 
 
 Upon our race, 
 Such arena slight 
 Is no sufficient place. 
 
 He must consort with murderers ; and he rambles 
 'Arm in arm, freezing their cruel heart, 
 And decoying the poor victim to their shambles, 
 
 With every cunning art. 
 
 Oft in his own fell person will he do the crime 
 This occurreth many a time. 
 One time especially have I heard tell, 
 
 And remember well, 
 How in Whitechapel's slums a man held murderous 
 
 revel 
 
 No man was he but the incarnate Devil. 
 As fittest offerings for his bloody shambles, 
 He selected women on his nightly rambles, 
 Inveigling them within his mesh 
 Women, whose milkwhite flesh 
 Is white to sight and velvet soft to feeling, 
 
 Even though sin has soiled their soul past healing. 
 Their swelling breasts, their cream-white thighs, 
 His taste for blood did only appetise. 
 
 W T herefore, when he did entangle them, 
 Meaning but to mangle them,
 
 THE DEVIL AT CRIME. 2J 
 
 Straightway he set to work, 
 And in dark room did lurk. 
 He kissed them, he loved them, he toyed, 
 And to the full his banquet he enjoyed 
 Then raised his knife, 
 And his poor clinging-, shrieking wife, 
 He slashed, he stabbed, he sliced to pieces, 
 Rioting with a rage that never ceases, 
 In horrible orgy slashing and cutting, 
 With mangled flesh his appetite glutting, 
 
 Wallowing in the blood 
 Which in crimson flood 
 Him and his victim deeply drenched. 
 
 Till at the last roaring he wrenched 
 Her heart from out her bosom rent, 
 And with this trophy at length content 
 Left her and back to Hell he went. 
 In Holy Writ it is reported, 
 Ere the Flood drowned the earth in waters, 
 The Devil and his angels courted 
 The earth's fair daughters, 
 Beguiling them with an infernal kiss 
 And how they loved them we may learn by this. 
 
 THE DEVIL IN POVERTY. 
 
 The Devil has a minion, 
 
 Who in my opinion 
 Is nigh as bad as he himself 
 An elf, 
 A spectre 
 
 Hideous beyond conjecture. 
 Her name, alas ! too many know full well 
 Her name is Poverty ; she comes from Hell. 
 Hot from Hell she comes, this skeleton, this apparition, 
 
 Coming on unfriendly mission 
 To mortals poor in garrets and in dens, 
 Whose whereabouts too well she kens 
 But not alone upon her path uncivil, 
 But with her always is the Devil, 
 Who comes to see the fun, 
 The awful joke when people are undone, 
 To hear them curse and storm and swear 
 Beneath the grinding misery they cannot bear, 
 To lap the bitter tears they shed 
 
 When they lack bread, 
 To watch them smiting the bare wall, 
 Pacing the bare room 
 Bathed in gloom, 
 Where not a stick at all 
 Of furniture exists, 
 Wringing their hands, clenching' their fists,
 
 28 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Half mad with misery and care. 
 
 " Almighty Hell ! 'tis rare 
 
 Sport," says the Devil, and nudging his 
 
 confrere, 
 His beastly mate 
 And foul associate, 
 To the fray he harks her on. 
 Then, grinning skeleton ! 
 Poverty advances, 
 And she dances 
 
 With her rattling bones about them, 
 And her acrobatic actions 
 And contractions 
 Foil and flout them. 
 Her jaws are gaunt and quivering. 
 Her every limb is shivering. 
 And her wretched victims shudder, and anticipate 
 
 Their fate. 
 
 She seizes and embraces them, 
 And closely interlaces them ; 
 
 And with hugging and with tugging, 
 And with grasping and with clasping, 
 She seeks to make them tire, 
 
 She seeks to throw them over in a wrestle long and dire. 
 And all the while the Devil with exultant cachinnation 
 Evinces his approval of the gruesome situation. 
 
 He likes to see 
 A worthy man in misery, 
 (And he so often sees him,) 
 A great man crushed, 
 Brought level with the dust 
 
 By grinding Poverty 
 (Nothing can better please him,) 
 
 The honest man become a thief, 
 The temperate, to drown his grief, 
 Turn to a drunkard bestial, 
 The noble and high-souled sink from his state 
 
 celestial 
 
 Into a truckling traitor knave, 
 The generous and brave 
 
 Become a felon and a slave 
 
 All these are sights with which the Devil is familiar. 
 And he says to his auxiliar, 
 
 " Pretty Poverty, 
 Thou'rt very dear to me. 
 Though I have many a minister 
 
 Of aspect sinister, 
 No jackal out of Hell 
 Hunts me up half such booty, 
 
 And does his duty 
 So conscientiously and well. 
 For thy reward I here decree,
 
 THE DEVIL IN POVERTY. 29 
 
 A parl of Hell shall be assigned to thee, 
 As thy peculiar province and domain. 
 There thou shalt reign. 
 And, to show thee how I prize thee, 
 I here advise thee 
 I have decided, 
 The worst 
 And most accursed 
 Of all the damned in Hell immersed, 
 Shall to thy tender mercies be confided." 
 
 THE DEVIL ON A CATTLESHIP. 
 
 D'ye know, His Devilship 
 May oft be met as master of a cattleship? 
 In which capacity, 
 Trust my veracity, 
 He has more opportunity 
 To exercise his calling- with immunity, 
 Than in a dozen other spheres of his profanity, 
 Where he is only persecuting poor humanity. 
 
 And in the cattleship, 
 With spiked and loaded club within his grip, 
 
 He moves about, 
 Dealing the fenceless rout 
 
 Of terrified brutes such blows and bloody gashes, 
 As with his club their heads and eyes he slashes, 
 That mad with terror, and with blood blind, 
 They plunge about, in stalls confined, 
 Amid the washing waves and the roaring wind, 
 Trampling each other, killing each other sheer, 
 In their ignorance and their agony and their fear. 
 Quoth the Devil, " 'Tis thus that I prepare 
 
 The sumptuous fare, 
 Which West End dinner-tables bear. 
 The guests have luxuries galore. 
 But I I have my fun before. ' ' 
 As when in hot Calcutta the Black Hole 
 Yawned and received within its sultry den, 
 Where scarce was space for e'en a single soul, 
 Two hundred of our hapless countrymen ; 
 All through the night, stuffed, stifled in their pen, 
 They yelled, screamed, prayed, they struggled and 
 
 they died : 
 
 (" I was among them," quoth the Devil. " Well 
 I recollect that night, to which not Hell 
 In its worst form could find a parallel. 
 'Twas ecstasy to hear them how they yelled and cried, 
 To see them bathed in perspiration, 
 
 Melting like damnation 
 
 'Twas one of my great triumphs was that night, 
 And gave me such delight,
 
 30 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 That not to be deprived of it, I smacked my lips, 
 
 And invented cattleships. 
 And now my tastes at ease I gratify, 
 
 As I can amply ratify.") 
 As when the gloomy Black Hole did entomb 
 Those helpless victims in its stifling womb : 
 So in their pens the oxen, fresh from open wold 
 And wide savannahs airy, free and cold, 
 
 Fragrant with grass and heather, 
 Huddle and sweat, in hundreds stuffed together, 
 Immured in sweltering tunnel 
 Near the giant funnel, 
 Which radiates an Afric heat eternal, 
 And brings them sufferings infernal. 
 In vain they low and bellow in their hell, 
 And mad with suffering on each other tread, 
 Seeking a draught of air amid the stench and smell, 
 The struggling beasts, the dying and the dead. 
 (" This state of things," the Devil cries, 
 " Doth exactly realise 
 My best intention. 
 O'er cattleships 
 I smack my lips ; 
 They are my pet invention.") 
 
 THE DEVIL IN A SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. 
 
 Hewing and hacking, gashing and slashing, 
 Mauling and mangling, hashing and mashing, 
 Into the pit of a slaughter-house readily 
 In jumps the Devil, and goes to work steadily 
 Into the pit that with sheep is all huddled, 
 Bleating, together in agony cuddled, 
 On them he jumps, and with barbarous knife, 
 Gleaming athirst to take their life, 
 Kneeling bestrides them one by one, 
 Pausing ne'er till his work is done, 
 And, wrenching their timid heads up, gloats 
 In cutting their unprotected throats. 
 Little by little the pit it floats 
 
 Knee-deep in blood. Then His Devilship sniggering, 
 Daubed with a plaster of colour disfiguring, 
 Sits like a cormorant on the shoulder 
 Of a slaughterer, making him bolder 
 By whispering counsel into his ear 
 To gash and slash and have no fear; 
 Making a bet, that in so many minute 
 He'll clear the pit and all that's in it. 
 One of these so bloody tussles 
 Once I heard of, when in Brussels 
 'Twas to the effect, 
 As I recollect,
 
 THE DEVIL IN A SLAUGHTER-HOUSE. '3! 
 
 That the Devil disguised as a butcher witty, 
 An Englishman and more's the pity 
 Wagered he had the diabolic power 
 Of killing six hundred sheep within an hour. 
 Whether he won his bet, 
 
 I forget. 
 
 But certainly I can picture his face 
 And diabolical grimace, 
 Among the ruins of the sheep 
 And bleeding entrails heap on heap, 
 Sitting like Ajax, when he did destroy 
 Flocks of sheep instead of regiments at Troy, 
 And sat grinning in his tent, 
 
 In idiot merriment 
 
 At the bleeding fragments round him, 
 The offal, garbage, guts, that did surround him : 
 So sat the Devil, and so he sits 
 In many a slaughter-house every day, 
 When at length he has ceased to slay, 
 Sitting in triumph and munching the bits, 
 
 In the blood paddling, 
 On the garbage in triumph straddling, 
 And " This is the way," he cries, " that I arrange 
 
 The whirligig of life. 
 I make it one elaborate interchange 
 
 Of death and strife. 
 Hurrah for victory and strife eternal, 
 The crown of my diplomacy infernal ! 
 I make one race upon another prey, 
 Each race the other slay. 
 
 I do decree 
 
 In this weak world perpetual feud shall be 
 Twixt race and race and tribe and family. 
 
 That one may live, 
 Another must be martyred. 
 That men may thrive, 
 Beasts must be tortured. 
 That beasts may feed, 
 How many beasts must bleed ! 
 How many a simple brute must fatten, 
 That others on its flesh may batten ! 
 
 How many birds of prey 
 Pounce down their brother birds to slay ! 
 That humbler birds their life may cherish, 
 Insects in holocausts must perish. 
 
 And in the sea 
 What massacres there be ! 
 
 Fishes in legions overpowering, 
 With other fish their multitudes devouring 
 The herring killed by mackerel, 
 The mackerel martyred by the eel, 
 The eel by the swift salmon followed,
 
 32 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 The salmon by the dolphin swallowed, 
 The dolphin in the waters dark 
 Pursued and gobbled by the shark. 
 
 Oh ! in the sea 
 'Tis royal sport for me ; 
 For almost all the quiet ocean 
 With war and rapine is in dire commotion. 
 Thus I arrange 
 Life in pattern strange, 
 (For be it known 
 I am omnipotent,) 
 Making life death, 
 Stifling breath, 
 A'nd holding only strife and slaughter excellent." 
 
 THE DEVIL AT VIVISECTION. 
 
 O agony most dire ! O Devil, 
 
 Who made this agony now for thy most unholiest revel, 
 Most villainous invention, 
 Vile vivisection ! tortures that harrow 
 And dry up our marrow 
 At the mere mention. 
 Into a charnel house we go, 
 A charnel house of woe, 
 Where those, who should be dead, 
 Yet live and feel, 
 Where dead things stir, and corpses reel. 
 
 Here helpless animals are ta'en, 
 And outraged of their life with cruel pain, 
 Their sweet life put to mockery, 
 Their cunning form abused with heartless levity ; 
 And here the Devil sitting like a surgeon, 
 
 A most immaculate chirurgeon, 
 
 Holds forth upon the needs of Science cursed study ! 
 That has killed souls in thousands, and would fain 
 
 too kill the body. 
 
 Never such handle had the Devil before, 
 Never such theme to pour 
 His superficial rhetoric o'er 
 
 Never such handle to contrive 
 Vile torturing of things alive ; 
 Never such text to cover up his crime 
 And blind the eyes of men with sophistries sublime. 
 Accursed Science ! cursed study ! 
 Vocation barbarous and bloody, 
 Here is thy temple, 
 Here proceeds thy revel, 
 Presided over by the Devil. 
 
 " Almighty Hell ! " 'tis thus he cries 
 To his adoring votaries ; 
 " We, who have met on this occasion,
 
 THE DEVIL AT VIVISECTION. 33 
 
 Are gentlemen of one persuasion 
 
 We all agree no God exists, 
 
 All are unshrinking atheists. 
 
 We hold the world a mechanism, 
 
 And have no creed or catechism. 
 
 God, Heaven, Hereafter, are mere vanity. 
 
 And nought remains but sweet humanity. 
 
 Since on these points we're all agreed, 
 
 Let the sacrifice proceed ! 
 A sacrifice, which 'twere insanity 
 To call a criminal profanity, 
 Since 'tis to benefit humanity." 
 Then come in miserable line, 
 Led on by chemists 
 And anatomists 
 To the Devil's shrine, 
 
 Poor dogs and frisking rabbits full of life, 
 Destined to be the sport of ruthless knife, 
 Of cruelties the most refined 
 Which can suggest themselves to human mind, 
 Plied with barbarity unrelenting. 
 In vain they lick the hand of those who slay them. 
 Their cruelty knows no repenting ; 
 
 For it is Science, 
 A sham that bids defiance 
 
 To human instincts, and to Nature and to God, 
 A senseless wild concatenation 
 Of baseless theories, doctrines odd, 
 Which the next generation 
 
 Will certainly pronounce downright hallucination. 
 Thus is it that the Devil deceives us, 
 
 And then leaves us, 
 To chuckle in his sleeve, 
 While we can nought but grieve. 
 And 'tis to such a sham, O Christ, 
 Thy creatures fair are sacrificed. 
 He who a living frog did take and skin, 
 Then watched its fearful sufferings with scientific grin, 
 Should have been seized with like severity, 
 And skinned alive to terrify posterity. 
 His name was G. H. Lewes ; and may he be 
 Branded with lasting infamy, 
 
 For the poor little mites he robbed of life, 
 And tortured with his hellish knife ! 
 
 An Italian, 
 A cursed rapscallion, 
 Whose name I do forget, nor am I fain 
 It to remember put to devilish pain, 
 
 Which he himself confessed excels 
 The tortures of ten thousand hells, 
 A poor sweet rabbit ; whom he took, 
 And, that he might the better look,
 
 34 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Enclosed in magnifying glass the while. 
 He put the pretty thing to tortures vile. 
 With scalpel and with pick he did proceed 
 To make each individual vein to bleed, 
 And pick out, with a hand that did not swerve, 
 From every vein its individual nerve. 
 This operation days and days proceeded ; 
 Its pain all unimaginable pain exceeded. 
 The victim writhed and whimpered, writhed and died, 
 While he relentlessly his savage tortures plied. 
 Such pains as these, the man, the fiend, confessed, 
 Could by the anguish of a thousand hells not be 
 
 expressed 
 
 But oh, my pen I can no more, no more. 
 With horror steeped, I must give o'er. 
 
 (But I would add, 
 
 'Twould make me glad 
 
 And fain for it would I give all my money 
 To see this w^retch with tortures mad, 
 
 In hell, or in a place as bad, 
 For barbarously torturing " poor Bunny.") 
 
 THE DEVIL AS A FISHERMAN. 
 
 Fish say it was the Devil who 
 Taught men to angle 
 To drop a hook 
 In bubbling brook, 
 To let it sink the gurgling water through, 
 
 And to entangle 
 
 Some hapless scalebearer of silvery hue, 
 Ensheathed in spangle 
 Glittering and fair, 
 All unsuspicious of a snare, 
 Who, ploughing pliantly the limpid water, 
 
 Exchanges suddenly his path triumphant there 
 For tortures horrible and slaughter 
 Coldly protracted, as he is dragged 
 Hither and thither with hook jagged 
 
 Fixed in his entrails tender, 
 Which doth acutest pain engender ; 
 Until at last he on the bank is lying, 
 Expiring, panting, and with terror dying. 
 
 So say the fish. And what say we? 
 I for my part do with the fish agree, 
 And feel convinced most certainly, 
 Unless the Devil had had a hand in it, 
 A way more merciful there sure would be 
 
 For catching a poor fish and landing it. 
 Let us not speak. This is a bagatelle. 
 If you would know some of the tortures dire of Hell, 
 Turn to the fish trade, and there find
 
 THE DEVIL AS A FISHERMAN. 35 
 
 How the Devil riots in barbarities unkind, 
 
 And spreads his merciless damnation 
 
 All through the circuit of creation. 
 
 Poor cod ! poor fishes ! we can ne'er surmise 
 
 Their dire unutterable agonies, 
 When, baled from out their native element, 
 And packed in perforated well, 
 
 A watery hell, 
 They lie in thousands close together pent, 
 
 Choked with oppression overpowering, 
 Starving for weeks, and then devouring 
 In wolfish famine their own livers up. 
 
 They who survive 
 In semi-animation 
 Are to a worse fate yielded up 
 
 Are crimped alive, 
 And suffer such damnation, 
 
 Pen will not write it, 
 Thought will not indite it. 
 And all this mass of cruelties uncivil 
 
 Unnecessary pain, to please the Devil ! 
 Who hath beheld as I have done, alack ! 
 The crabs' and armoured lobsters' agonies, 
 When them the men in tubs and barrels pack, 
 To send to London's market its supplies? 
 
 In truth, 'tis pitiful. 
 Into the barrel in their scores they go, 
 Until the tub is full. 
 Then work of woe ! 
 
 Down are they pressed, and others are piled in, 
 And rammed upon them tight so goes the work of sin. 
 To make room, claws are broken, shells with hammer 
 cracked 
 
 Till they are fully packed ; 
 Those at the top all mutilate and hacked, 
 Those underneath wedged in a solid mass, immovable 
 
 and dumb. 
 
 And over all is nailed the barrel's drum. 
 As bricks which in a wall 
 
 Are mortared all, 
 And tightly set together, 
 That neither wind nor weather 
 Can e'er disturb their layers symmetrical, 
 But in one block of architecture clever 
 So they are set at first, and so they stand for ever : 
 Just so the crabs and armoured lobsters, packed 
 In one mute mass of agony, for hours with pain are 
 
 racked : 
 
 Or as that Persian wall 
 Too terrible to tell, 
 
 Which Rustam made, with terror to appal, 
 And to ensure the tortures dire of hell ;
 
 36 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 In which he built his enemies, dire monster fell ! 
 Men, men alive, with mortar he cemented, 
 
 And ne'er repented, 
 
 Nor at their hideous sufferings relented, 
 Till finished was that wall of misery, 
 
 And the men were masonry 
 All but their heads, which were left free. 
 And they who came to view the structure vile, 
 Saw men not stones, with heads still moving for a 
 
 little while ! 
 
 THE DEVIL AS SPORTSMAN. 
 
 Bang ! bang ! goes the gun. 
 
 'Tis the 'Devil's fun, 
 Which he enjoys immensely. 
 
 To see the creatures fall, 
 Mangled and bleeding all 
 In this amusement he delights intensely. 
 
 To see wings blown away, 
 
 And all the plumage gay 
 Scattered in foul confusion on the heather 
 That is his darling sport 
 Of most bewitching sort, 
 When he and sportsmen royster it together. 
 
 For in a Norfolk suit 
 
 At almost every shoot 
 The Devil forms a member of the party, 
 
 With figure tall and straight, 
 
 And calves immaculate, 
 And face and manner rubicund and hearty. 
 
 'Tis true they see him not. 
 
 But that is oft the lot 
 Of those who join with Satan in a revel. 
 
 But the poor birds and hares, 
 
 Up starting from their lairs, 
 They see him and they know him as the Devil. 
 
 In early morn the deer, 
 
 Waking with sudden fear 
 Amid the fresh and fragrant greenwood round him, 
 
 Divines the hour is nigh. 
 
 When he, alas ! must die, 
 And hell with all its tortures will confound him. 
 
 The fox hears on the morn 
 
 The sound of hound and horn : 
 He knows all day the Devil will him follow ; 
 
 That he to death must run, 
 
 Till, when his strength is done, 
 He hears the Devil's loud triumphant holloa. 
 
 For whether 'tis a chase 
 
 At helter skelter pace, 
 Or whether 'tis a coursing match of mettle,
 
 THE DEVIL AS SPORTSMAN. 37 
 
 When puss, with terror wild, 
 Screams like a little child 
 
 When the grim greyhound's fangs upon her settle; 
 Or 'tis a pigeon match, 
 When pigeons by the batch 
 Are blown with heartless devilry to pieces ; 
 
 Or if 'tis a battue, 
 That sport refined and new 
 The Devil's mirth and laughter never ceases. 
 And if 'tis a battue, 
 I'll show you what he'll do 
 
 The golden pheasants, crested, plumed and flying, 
 He drives in thousands round 
 To some entrapping ground, 
 Where guns in dozens lay them dead or dying. 
 Bang go the guns ! bang ! bang ! 
 And as the barrels rang, 
 
 The smoke, the roar, the turmoil, is tremendous. 
 The lovely birds, like rain, 
 Drop dead upon the plain, 
 All mangled in a massacre stupendous. 
 Thus does the Devil vent his mirth. 
 He realises Hell on earth 
 Hell for the pheasants and what joy 
 For those the pheasants who destroy? 
 D'ye say we kill them, eh? to eat them? 
 
 Then I'd lay, 
 We sure could find a kinder way 
 
 To treat them. 
 
 Depend upon it, men and sinners, 
 Who fancy pheasant for your dinners ; 
 And other ye, who like to eat 
 The delicatest things in meat ; 
 If God, when making 
 The world, and taking 
 
 Such pains to clothe in love his fair invention 
 If God, I say, 
 Had had his way, 
 
 Without the Devil's damned intervention, 
 Then there had been no blood ; 
 We all had chewed the cud, 
 Like the poor sheep and oxen in the daisies. 
 But oh ! woe, woe ! 
 The Devil will not have it so, 
 But through the world perpetual feud he raises. 
 
 And in the fatal feud 
 Are hands with blood imbued ; 
 
 And in the strife and pother 
 Each man against his brother, 
 Each animal is set against the other, 
 To slaughter and to kill, 
 That is the Devil's will,
 
 38 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART I. 
 
 Not God's, be sure, a God of peace and mercy. 
 But 'tis the Devil's way, 
 Who evermore doth say, 
 
 " Kill, mangle, slaughter one another, curse ye ! 
 " Upon each other prey, 
 
 And do the best ye may 
 
 To turn this world of peace into a shambles, 
 So that my fiends and I may find 
 Your world exactly to our mind, 
 Whene'er we visit you upon our rambles."
 
 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL. 39 
 
 PART II. 
 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 Rappalus and Griboulliz, devils twain, 
 Inferior fiends and of a humble rank, 
 Once wandered lost upon the endless plain, 
 Which spreads in swamps and sad savannahs dank 
 Sheer through the world of darkness, raw and rank 
 A world where gloom and nig-ht eternal reigns, 
 No sunbeam cheers the wildernesses blank : 
 Darkness it is and darkness it remains. 
 
 Here the two devils wandered, lost upon the plains. 
 They were a pair of stragglers, who had fled 
 In a late conflict of the populace, 
 Who tenant that dominion, dark and dead 
 And, having flung promiscuous from the place, 
 They knew not how their footsteps to retrace, 
 But wandered on, with doubts and terrors tossed. 
 Forward and back they went in aimless pace, 
 Now turned aside, now what they crossed re-crossed 
 
 Paused baffled, and at last gave themselves up for lost. 
 Then Rappalus unto Griboulliz said : 
 " 'Twas this way, brother, or I am mistaken." 
 " Nay ! " cried Griboulliz. " Thou hast lost thy head. 
 " It was the other way we should have taken. 
 And since we have the other way forsaken, 
 Wrong have we gone entirely. 'Twas the right." 
 " I say the left. My certainty's unshaken." 
 Therewith the twain, to set the matter right, 
 
 With claws and teeth and nails forthwith began to fight. 
 The fight was over and they both were sore. 
 They paused confused, and knew not what to do. 
 On, on they wandered o'er the darkened moor, 
 Which every step darker and grimmer grew. 
 Nought but black darkness loomed upon the view. 
 Beneath their feet was sandy desert spread, 
 Where scurfy scrub and tussock grasses grew. 
 On, on they wandered with unwilling tread 
 
 O'er this eternal waste bleak, barren, black, and dead. 
 At last, when from despair they fain would sink, 
 They spied surprised a curious thread of gold 
 Far off as 'twere some chance unguarded chink 
 In a vast bastion, beetling huge and bold, 
 Which did a world of light and day enfold. 
 Amid the dark no other thing it seemed ; 
 Since night and endless gloom around were rolled,
 
 40 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 Blotting- out all in the blank black that teemed, 
 Except this glinting- chink, through which the glory gleamed. 
 Pricked with inquisitiveness and amaze, 
 The fiends resolved, however tired they were, 
 To post towards the fountain of those rays, 
 So to discover what lay hidden there. 
 Wherefore perpetually on they fare, 
 Until at last it seemed they nearer drew ; 
 For the thin thread amid the dusky air 
 Became more palpable and plain to view, 
 And every moment brighter and more glorious grew. 
 They had arrived. Nigh dazzled by the sheen, 
 For their bleared eyes but used to darkness were, 
 Groping they pushed their hands in front, to ween 
 What were before them, substance firm or air? 
 And came against a mighty bastion there, 
 Which hid a universe behind its back. 
 This as they felt with caution and with care, 
 They found the rock was severed with a crack, 
 Which cleft its face in twain in one continuous track. 
 Through this they peered. And spectacle enthralled 
 With wonder and astonishment their gaze. 
 For they beheld, at the bright sight appalled, 
 A world of light, a universe of rays, 
 Plains sweeping out beneath a noonday blaze, 
 And on the plains angelic forms to see, 
 Winged, helmeted, in armies and arrays. 
 Amazed were those two devils utterly. 
 Nor what to think or deem they knew not properly. 
 Ne'er had they heard, ne'er had they dreamt before 
 Of light, of day, of world or region such. 
 Fain would they view the spacious district o'er. 
 Much would they see, but yet could not see much, 
 So thin the tiny fissure which they clutch. 
 Eager to spy what could through chink be seen, 
 Their face and straining eyes the bastion touch. 
 'Twas but a glimpse they caught, the crack between ; 
 But that one glimpse revealed a universe of sheen. 
 Brimful of their immense discovery, 
 Big with importance at the news they bring, 
 Back into Hell they straight resolve to hie, 
 And carry the great tidings to their King, 
 Who like themselves ne'er knew of such a thing 
 As that gay world, which they by chance had viewed. 
 In Hell was darkness ever lowering, 
 And all the time by its fell multitude 
 Was passed in ceaseless quarrel and intestine feud. 
 To Hell at length nigh wearied out they came, 
 And found it all contention and all broil, 
 All darkness, lit at times with ghastly flame 
 Battles still raged and turbulent turmoil ; 
 Through which, albeit tired, they ne'er recoil
 
 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN GOD AND THE DEVIL. 4! 
 
 To push their way, full wary of the blows, 
 To where on quagmires and on quaking 1 soil 
 The palace of the King- of Hell arose, 
 
 Buttressed on mouldering beams and piles in rotten rows. 
 Here they recited to their monarch's ear 
 The tidings they incontinently bring-. 
 Well pleased was he th' intelligence to hear. 
 Complacently did smile the grisly king, 
 And quoth he had forgotten of such thing, 
 But now that they recited their strange story, 
 Dim recollections were engendering 
 Out of a buried past, long grey and hoary, 
 
 When he remembered well those realms of light and glory. 
 They were his own, belonged to him by right ; 
 He had been ousted from these realms he owned, 
 And headlong plunged in everlasting night. 
 By his own offspring had he been dethroned 
 (Which made his fate the trebly to be moaned) 
 By his own offspring whom he had begotten, 
 Who now reigned there in light and joy enthroned, 
 While he lay here weak, blasted, and forgotten, 
 
 In this foul world of death and putrefaction rotten. 
 But not so long. Now that the past came rising 
 In all its radiant brightness to his mind, 
 Time would he not waste more in temporising, 
 But to the enterprise would be inclined, 
 To re-possess those realms he had resigned, 
 Torn from his grasp by treachery unkind, 
 And by his son usurped, whom pride did blind 
 A parvenu, a king of mushroom kind ; 
 While he supremely old, though crushed, maligned, 
 
 Had ruled the heavens before his reign time out of mind. 
 Forthwith he was resolved. So let them say, 
 And straight through Hell the flaming tidings fling, 
 That Satan had resolved without delay 
 To march against the Heaven's usurping king, 
 Him to account and punishment to bring 
 For occupying honours not his own. 
 He ceased ; and them not further favouring, 
 Moodily turned toward his palace lone, 
 
 And they to speed through Hell and make the message 
 
 known. 
 
 From one tumultuous concourse to the next, 
 All bathed in feud, in quarrel and in fray, 
 With which dark Hell for evermore is vexed, 
 Ran the good news and information gay 
 Of the high enterprise they shall assay. 
 Forthwith, although with difficulty dire, 
 The wrestling combatants and legions lay 
 Their cause of quarrel down, and stayed their ire, 
 
 For the high aim which did their mettle most require. 
 Dumah with Atarcuph, Chobabiel
 
 42 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 With his old enemy Araciel, 
 
 Sampsich with Uzza, and with Balciel 
 
 Azazel most libidinous in Hell, 
 
 Pharmar with Tyriel and Eumiel 
 
 Ceased their dire feuds, which everlasting raged, 
 
 And turned to rest from controversy fell. 
 
 One moment were their conflicts dire assuaged, 
 That war might better be on peaceful Heaven waged. 
 
 All, all in Hell prepared, not these alone 
 
 All the dire fiends its inky womb doth own : 
 
 Great Semiaxas, who to Satan's throne 
 
 Next in supremacy and power was known, 
 
 Horammamee, Mozazor, Rayaboan, 
 
 Baradiel, Barakiel, Rameel, 
 
 Azalcel, Sarinas, Anaggimon, 
 
 Samael, Thausael, and Matareel, 
 Rubiel, Jamiel, Shalgotha, Amareel. 
 
 These with their myrmidons of fiends and elves, 
 
 Goblins and ghouls and apparitions fell, 
 
 Were emulously busying themselves 
 
 All through the inky fastnesses of Hell 
 
 In preparations for a war past parallel, 
 
 Which they were soon to wage 'gainst Heaven's high King. 
 
 Such conflict did their own so far excel, 
 
 Scarce could they curb their courage blustering, 
 Or to a moment's stay their fiery mettle bring. 
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 
 
 With chariots were they waiting, 
 Which winged fiends like vampires drew, 
 All marshalled, and all congregating', 
 Prepared to traverse through 
 The endless plains of gloom 
 And everlasting night, 
 Which lay with inky womb 
 Between them and the realms of light. 
 These to pass in voyage laborious 
 
 Were they prepared, 
 Yet hoping to return victorious 
 From the emprise they dared. 
 Now were they waiting, 
 In full force congregating, 
 
 The advent of their king, who now not long delayed, 
 And passing through the companies arrayed 
 Took place within the grisly cavalcade. 
 Off flew the chariots which the vampires drew 
 
 Off they flew; 
 And with wings outspread 
 Went whirring through the midnight dead, 
 Went sliding 
 And went gliding
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 43 
 
 Through the gloom, 
 Which like the tomb 
 Enwrapt all Nature in its womb. 
 Profoundest silence reigned around. 
 Except the whirr of the wings, no sound ! 
 Save a few muffled curses, 
 As some fiend rehearses 
 The lies he last had lied, 
 To his neighbour in the ride. 
 But now upon the ears of all 
 
 There did arise 
 A noise that did appal 
 The sudden buzzing of ten thousand Hies ; 
 
 Of flies in legion, 
 That filled every region, 
 And spread in a vast swarm, 
 Hideous and deform, 
 Up to the skies 
 
 There they arose and buzzed, a pyramid of flies ! 
 Then, turning to explain the thing, 
 They saw it was their king, 
 Who as Beelzebub was travestying, 
 Beelzebub the king of flies, 
 Of flies offensive, foul, and irritating, 
 Teasing, exasperating-, 
 Stinging and sticking, 
 Goading and pricking, 
 Till pricks become sheer agonies. 
 
 Flies, gnats, and dragon-flies, 
 Hornets and wasps and yellow-belted bees, 
 Gadflies with stings that frantically tease, 
 Insects and flies and humble-bees, 
 Beetles and bugs ill-savoured, 
 Death watches evil favoured, 
 Cockchafers, spiders, crickets, and with these 
 Storms of loathly lice and fleas 
 
 All met and all concreted 
 Into a pyramid, that with repeated 
 Swarm on swarm did upward rise, 
 Huge as a mountain, to the skies. 
 As when a swarm of bees do muster, 
 
 And in living cluster, 
 In which each particle is palpitating 
 
 And with life pulsating, 
 
 Hang, like a bunch of grapes from off a tree 
 Such was the pyramid to see. 
 But so enormous was its face, 
 It seemed to fill all space, 
 And be lost amid the clouds. 
 Then as the fiends around in crowds 
 Gazed astonished and half stupefied, 
 Their king from mid
 
 44 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 The pyramid, 
 Where he was hid, 
 Apologetically cried : 
 
 " Excuse me, gentlemen ; I did not mean 
 To trouble you with any needless apparition. 
 
 But I was meditating 
 
 And that will best account for my condition." 
 Then was he seen 
 To slowly change, 
 Disintegrating, 
 Into the aspect strange 
 Of Baal-Peor, god of all corruption, 
 (A favourite transfigurement of his) 
 
 And the dire change progressed without an interruption. - 
 Straight into worms he rotted. The flies change ; 
 And by a metamorphosis most strange 
 
 Their busy hive 
 
 Became a putrid mass, with maggots all alive. 
 Maggots and worms in mountains moved and crawled. 
 The devils viewed the well known change, appalled. 
 Their king was now a pyramid infirm 
 Of crawling vermin, wriggling worm, 
 All moving, heaving, festering, feeding 
 On the corruption whence they were proceeding, 
 
 Crumbling in filth, but to renew 
 Their life amid the filth from whence they grew. 
 All round the monstrous apparition blue flames played 
 
 The light putrescent 
 Of foul corruption incandescent 
 Illumining with ghastly gleam the shade. 
 
 As when a corpse, of malady malignant dying, 
 Turns fast to putrefying, 
 Yielding up its flesh to rottenness, 
 To mouldering decay and putridness, 
 Until it swims in hideous decomposition : 
 
 Such was the fearful apparition, 
 So rotted Satan before their eyes, 
 So did he change from flies 
 To foulest dead corruption most appalling, 
 With maggots, vermin, worms, alive and crawling. 
 And as he decayed, 
 Through the shade 
 Arose a stench most horrible and fell, 
 So that his own fiends even must 
 
 Turn away in dire disgust 
 At the intolerable smell. 
 But he cheerily 
 And even merrily 
 From his mount of putrefaction, 
 
 Noticing their action, 
 Rallied them as on he trode : 
 " Have no fear,
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 45 
 
 My masters, of your old friend Baal-Peor, 
 
 Whose abode 
 In the lowest pit of hell 
 Has ever been distinguished by its smell. 
 
 He's a mere fraction, to be sure, of me; 
 
 And very soon you'll see 
 The worms will turn to better things, 
 
 To serpents without stings, 
 
 With which we can enjoy ourselves. I will be Baal 
 A being most indubitably male. 
 
 And ye, your pleasure to increase, 
 A serpent you shall have apiece, 
 As large a one as e'er ye list. 
 How to use it, well ye wist. 
 Come, cease at once these feelings of disgust, 
 And turn to thoughts of love and lust." 
 Hereat arose from all the fiends around 
 
 A shout of fierce delight, 
 
 That tore Hell's concave black ; and with its sound 
 Frighted the realm of Chaos and old Night. 
 Straightway amid the shade 
 The chariots were slackened, and then stayed ; 
 And Satan loudly bawling 
 With voice appalling, 
 Which went pealing to illimitable distance in the dark, 
 
 thus cried : 
 
 " Ho ye ! who at the half way house reside, 
 My panders, pumps, and taverners, whom I have set 
 
 to dwell 
 
 At this the last extremity of Hell, 
 To cheer one on an endless chase 
 Through nigh immeasurable space 
 Before we plumb 
 The regions icy cold 
 Of shivering darkness dumb 
 And Chaos old, 
 Which yet remain 
 Upon the endless plain, 
 Bring forth the wine cup here to cheer us, 
 And females to endear us, 
 Wine to bless us, 
 They to caress us, 
 To fire us 
 And inspire us, 
 
 To make us merry in the cold, and warm, 
 That, flushed with lechery, 
 And drunk with wine, 
 We thus may storm 
 By force or treachery 
 The mount divine, 
 And, gaining victory supreme, 
 Realise our most radiant dream.
 
 46 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 Ho ! bring the women and the wine ! " 
 Thus as he spoke, there did entwine 
 Him from his summit to the ground 
 Millions of serpents, coiling him around ; 
 For he was Baal, the serpent god, 
 
 And at his nod 
 
 All corruption had passed away, 
 Leaving him glittering and gay, 
 Sheathed in sheaves of golden snakes, 
 Whose flashing scales and sparkling flakes 
 Lighted up the shade, 
 As, him enlacing, 
 Round about his form they played. 
 Like some light armour him encasing, 
 So gleamed they golden in the gloom, 
 And with their gold the darkness did illume. 
 He was the god of youth and generation, 
 
 And 'twas hard to say 
 
 Whether 'twas snake or phallus of fair procreation, 
 That thus in myriads did round him play. 
 But he was plucking off and flinging 
 Them to his legionaries round, 
 Who caught the coiling serpents swinging 
 
 Ere they fell to ground. 
 
 And the voice of fell Azazel, leader of all lust, 
 Was heard in importunity afar away : 
 " Bring out the females for our amours gay. 
 Bring them out ye must 
 Forthwith without delay. 
 Haste ! for the vampire steeds are pawing 
 The turf of the illimitable plain, 
 The air with their wide wings are sawing, 
 
 As eager to be off again. 
 
 And we upon our journey bound, our spirits spent to rally, 
 Are fain awhile with our fair frail to dally, 
 And in their arms voluptuously 
 Some hours of ecstasy 
 
 To spend. 
 Haste ! bring them forth ; and with them bring the wine, 
 
 To lend 
 Its sweet intoxicant divine, 
 
 And to inflame 
 
 To wild lasciviousness our frame." 
 He ceased. And soon there was a rustling sound ; 
 There was a sight 
 Amid the night 
 
 Of fluttering of garments white ; 
 The noise of screams and cries was heard around 
 
 Till all was drowned 
 In a very storm of kisses 
 
 And serpents' hisses. 
 Then it seemed as they,
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 47 
 
 Be they who they may, 
 Were handed 
 And bandied 
 
 Unceremoniously from hand to hand 
 Into the chariots that waiting stand. 
 Crack ! strikes the whip. And off they flew, 
 Forging- the dreary midnight through. 
 And as the grim procession oaring goes, 
 Ever and anon amid the dark arose 
 Expostulations and little screams, 
 Angry words, and, as it seems, 
 The noise of struggles now and then, 
 Like women struggling with men, 
 And persisting 
 In resisting 
 Bold liberties, 
 Rude importunities. 
 And Satan himself, the Arch Devil, 
 
 Joining in the revel, 
 
 Cried (ne'er in a chariot was he bestowed, 
 But like a centaur in the midst he rode. 
 He had just seized the fairest of them all, 
 A female beautiful and tall, 
 A lovely concubine 
 
 Of shape divine, 
 All naked and white 
 In the dim night, 
 Save for a veil of gauze that came 
 Wrapping and half revealing her shrinking frame, 
 For full of modesty she was and shame. 
 
 And with her hands concealed her face, 
 Resisting and rejecting the embrace.) 
 Then Satan cried unto his fiends around : " Each libertine 
 
 May revel to the full in sin, 
 Each with his mistress at his whim 
 And with the serpent I have given him. 
 But I take the fairest 
 And the rarest 
 
 To seduce. 
 And for my use, 
 Me rapture pure to give, 
 I have reserved a phallus most superlative." 
 
 His speech was greeted 
 By shouts of acquiescence oft repeated, 
 Shrieks of demoniac laughter, 
 
 And following after 
 Lustful words and phrase obscene, 
 Talk lascivious and unclean. 
 
 And he taking 
 
 The shrinking woman in his arms, 
 His appetite slaking 
 On her charms,
 
 48 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 Commenced to wind around her, 
 So that it did confound her, 
 His mighty serpent slippery and sliding. 
 O'er all her frame 'twas slipping and 'twas gliding; 
 Between her marble thighs 
 
 It did arise; 
 Her limber waist around 
 
 It coiled, it wound ; 
 It kissed, it stole, it pressed 
 
 Her marble swelling chest, 
 And nestled in her breast, 
 Till by its persistence 
 It o'ercame all resistance ; 
 And her coyness 
 
 Became desire, 
 Her shyness 
 
 Changed to fire. 
 She accepted and expected 
 What at first she had rejected ; 
 And winding round him her snowy arms, 
 Yielding to him all her charms, 
 With her kiss she was glued 
 
 To his face, 
 Naked and nude 
 In his embrace, 
 Welcoming his speeches rude, 
 Listening without fear, 
 
 Shameless and serene, 
 While he poured into her ear 
 His infamies obscene. 
 Then Satan cried : " What ho ! I feel 
 
 For all the world like Belial. 
 And in a chariot would I fain bestow 
 Myself and my sweet concubine, 
 And so awhile would through the midnight go. 
 Fain would I at my ease recline, 
 
 Drinking wine, 
 
 Forgetting all but her who in my arms 
 Yields me the banquet of her charms 
 
 A banquet heightened by the fire 
 Of ruddy wine to kindle fierce desire." 
 So in a chariot he took his seat. 
 And with paces fleet 
 
 Off flew the vampires through the night, 
 Off fled the grisly cavalcade, 
 And its interminable journey made 
 Through those wide steppes of darkness and of doom, 
 
 Eternal silence and eternal gloom, 
 Which bathed the whole horizon round. 
 
 Raw the chill air, nor any sound 
 Save the oaring of the vampires' wings, 
 And the whistle that the chill breeze brings.
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 49 
 
 But now the silence of the night 
 
 Was broken quite 
 By the roar of songs obscene 
 
 And ribaldries unclean, 
 Curses and imprecations, 
 Diabolic cachinnations. 
 And as the wine cup circulated tingling 
 There came with songs and bawdries intermingling 
 
 Drunken oaths and maudlin utterings, 
 Blasphemies relapsing into stutterings, 
 Ravings, and demoniac riot 
 Such were the sounds disturbed the quiet 
 Of the plains of everlasting gloom, 
 Till now as still and silent as the tomb. 
 On they were flying in their chariots at post haste. 
 The vampires' wings were like the sails, 
 Which the Chineses spread to catch the gales 
 And waft their cany waggons o'er the waste, 
 The barren waste of Sericane, 
 
 Wild, bleak and dread. 
 
 Yet far more wild and bleak was that wild plain 
 Through whose perpetual gloominess they sped- 
 Then Satan from his chariot, drinking, 
 And with his bats' eyes blinking 
 Through the eternal shade, 
 Cried : " Drink on merrily, 
 
 Sheep of my fold. 
 Warm yourselves cheerily 
 Against th' engulfing cold. 
 Bleak blows the air, 
 The blast is chill. 
 Drink, swill, and swear, 
 Swear, drink, and swill. 
 Sure there's no pleasure like to cursing, 
 
 Drinking and cursing, 
 When you are nursing 
 A slip of womanhood upon your knee, 
 Whom you have dragged from innocence 
 
 Down to depravity. 
 Wine intoxicates your sense, 
 Love thrills you, 
 Triumph fills you. 
 Her unresisting suavity 
 Is too much for your gravity. 
 And you drink, drink, drink 
 Till you are drunk, drunk, drunk, 
 And you think, think, think, 
 That the maiden chaste and fair, 
 Whom you've ruined with such care, 
 Is now a punk, punk, punk." 
 
 Hereat the devils all 
 Through the night funereal
 
 50 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 Joined in the chorus 
 With song" uproarious. 
 And with each in the night 
 There was a marble figure white, 
 Clinging closely for protection, 
 Weeping wildly at rejection. 
 But with surfeiting of lust 
 Back were they thrust, 
 Oft ruthless in the dust. 
 And the chariots sped on 
 With the yell of drinking song, 
 And blasphemies uncounted, 
 
 As the wine mounted 
 And lent its w r ild intoxication 
 To fire the powers of imprecation. 
 
 Then Satan, staggering to his feet, 
 Stepped from the chariot fleet ; 
 And accompanied the cortege 
 In drunken orgy and rampage. 
 
 As should a mountain, racked with dire convulsion's throe, 
 Etna or St. Pelee, rock wildly to and fro, 
 Moved by the fire within, and, as 'twould heel 
 From cloudy summit over, sway and reel 
 Then should it romp in monstrous frolic o'er 
 Th' affrighted earth, which quakes with timorous roar : 
 So Satan reeled and rolled upon the plain, 
 Like some huge hill let loose to reel amain. 
 Ramping in orgy unrestrained he went, 
 His head now buried in the firmament, 
 Now striking with colliding crash the ground, 
 His base gyrating in mad circles round. 
 Shapeless he was, amorphous, a mere mound 
 
 Of formless form, to all shapes crumbling, 
 As he went stumbling, 
 Tripping and heeling, 
 Rolling and reeling, 
 
 All through the wilderness toppling and tumbling. 
 Under such baneful influence the whole rout 
 Emptied its dense arrays in chaos out. 
 The chariots knew not their order more. 
 East, west, south, north, bewildered, out they bore. 
 At random the huge vampires flew. 
 Hither and thither the cars they drew 
 In mob confused the dim air through. 
 The drivers were bewildered, and straight fell 
 To quarrel and to mutiny pell-mell. 
 All the foul discord reigned of lowest Hell. 
 He in the midst, Chaos, the Anarch old, 
 In wreck and chaos uncouthly rolled. 
 
 Now would the total host 
 Have gone to irredeemable disorder, 
 In wreck and chaos lost,
 
 THE RIDE THROUGH THE PLAINS OF DARKNESS. 5! 
 
 And ne'er have reached the heavenly border, 
 Whereto with all their leg-ions they were bound, 
 Had they not seen 
 From the concourse round 
 Satan in their midst, as on he staggered, 
 Grow calmer and more orderly of mien ; 
 His shapeless shape, portion by portion, 
 Mould itself into proportion ; 
 
 His wayward elements 
 Melt into lineaments, 
 White and haggard ; 
 
 Until with bated breath 
 They saw him on a pale horse, like Death, 
 
 Determinedly riding, 
 The whole host guiding. 
 His teeth were set, 
 His brows were knit, 
 His face beneath the helmet he had on 
 Was like a grinning skeleton. 
 Thus rode he on undaunted on his way. 
 
 They followed, powerless to disobey. 
 So went they on for many a weary mile, 
 All through the dark and suffocating gloom. 
 Nought festive and nought gay them now beguile. 
 Stern are they as their leader, who like doom 
 Did at their head in pomp funereal loom. 
 He knew, none else, the way that they should take 
 Through that dark world, which did all scene entomb. 
 And to his goal with never a mistake, 
 Like Fate inflexible, his fatal way did make. 
 'Twas now some fiends advancing in the van 
 Did cry aloud that they beheld a light, 
 Which like a thread of gold distinctly ran 
 Sheer o'er the murky curtain of the night. 
 All turned to look, enraptured at the sight ; 
 And Satan cried aloud, " There lies our goal ! 
 Hasten we on, with speed renewed, our flight ! 
 There we may breach the bastion, and console 
 Ourselves with pillage, riot, glut without control." 
 Shouts rend the welkin at the prospect gay, 
 Up surged in mass the streaming multitude. 
 Oft" flew the winged chariots on their way, 
 Cleaving the darkened air with strength renewed. 
 So pressed they on with impious thoughts imbued, 
 Till the whole force before the bastion stand, 
 W T hile surging come behind to where these stood 
 From vast infinity band after band, 
 From one long train which stretched sheer through the 
 
 darkened land. 
 
 At last all came. And Satan spoke aloud 
 His face was haggard, grey his scanty hair, 
 His cheeks with myriads of wrinkles ploughed.
 
 52 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 His countenance that ravaged look did wear, 
 Which witnessed him the prey of ceaseless care. 
 Yet spake he then as one who all would dare ; 
 Filled with the force and courage of despair, 
 And raging recklessness beyond compare. 
 He spoke, and every word which met the ear 
 Was dreadful blasphemy and execration sheer. 
 
 His words were to this purport : " Here we stand. 
 Before us is the bastion, and within 
 Shines, gleams and glows the fair and heavenly land 
 Of God and all his angels, void of sin, 
 Which 'tis our aim to conquer and to win 
 To storm, by straight assault, so my voice goes. 
 Wherefore 't remains to plan how to begin, 
 That by surprise we may disarm our foes, 
 , And grappling unprepared in deadly fight may close. 
 " Myself the leader, all will follow me, 
 Do as I do, my actions imitate. 
 You, Semiaxas, act auxiliar 
 To me. Throughout the fray be my familiar. 
 You, Atarcuph, whom heaven Saturn calls, 
 And fears your scythe and hour-glass in its walls, 
 Lead the reserves. Be cool, deliberate. 
 Tarry apart inactive. My sign wait, 
 And move not till the crisis of the fray. 
 So mayest thou thus decide the fortune of the day. 
 All ye the rest, Mozazor, Rayabon, 
 Baradiel, Barakiel, Rameel, 
 Azalcel, Sarinas, Anajimon, 
 Samael, Thausael, and Matareel, 
 
 Show your good strength, and with your goblin legions 
 Burst in, profane, spoil the celestial regions, 
 Drag down the terraces, sack, pillage, maim ! 
 Rapine and outrage ! Let these be your aim." 
 Thus spoke he, waxing loud with execrations 
 And every moment louder to the ear, 
 Until at last his dreadful imprecations 
 Became so terrible and fell to hear, 
 That e'en the devils bid him to be still, 
 If for no other cause, at least for fear 
 That they within might opportunely hear, 
 And know thus that a foe without in force was near. 
 Then did he grow convulsed with furious passion ; 
 
 From one convulsion to another fell, 
 In execrable fashion, 
 
 As if possessed with all the pains of hell.
 
 THE ASSAULT ON THE SEVENTY THOUSAND HEAVENS. 53 
 
 THE ASSAULT ON THE SEVENTY THOUSAND 
 HEAVENS. 
 
 Then Atarcuph the old said, " Yea ! 
 Your plan is good that will I not gainsay. 
 But first instruct us how we may begin. 
 This bastion is of triple adamant before us, 
 And like a mountain loometh o'er us. 
 How may we entrance win? 
 Through such a barrier how get in? " 
 Then Satan cried, " Leave that to me. 
 Lo ! I will give you passage free, 
 Passage to all, if ye are ready. 
 Say are ye ready? 
 Stand ye steady ? 
 And are ye nerved to follow me? " 
 
 Then all around 
 
 With confused and muttered sound 
 Cried, they were ready, 
 They stood steady 
 And him would follow to eternity. 
 
 Then he 
 
 Foaming with passion 
 Up to the bastion went, 
 And digging in in furious fashion 
 Into the rent 
 His fingers bent, 
 With face blenched 
 And hands clenched, 
 The adamant in twain he wrenched. 
 With a crack like thunder 
 From base to crest the bastion yawned asunder, 
 
 Exposing all it had concealed 
 
 And the whole Seventy Thousand Heavens lay revealed, 
 In terrace upon terrace rising 
 
 Till lost to sight, 
 
 With starry battlements of starry light, 
 All spangled and all sparkling 
 With diamonds aglimmer, 
 All scintillating with a shimmer 
 Of trembling lustres bright. 
 Each terrace was a heaven 
 
 Of courts and palaces, 
 And radiant firmaments, 
 
 And crystal seas, 
 
 And golden gates where nought profane had trod. 
 And in the highest heaven was the throne of God. 
 
 So stood Satan and his legions 
 Of fiends and goblins, ghouls and satyrs, without fear 
 
 In the celestial regions 
 Before the Seventy Thousand Heavens rising tier on tier.
 
 54 1HE EPJ C OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 But 'twas a moment only ; 
 For next instant sounded 
 From every terrace, every heaven, 
 The trumpets of the cherubims astounded. 
 Sheer up the pyramid of heavens 
 The fanfare is repeated, 
 And by the heavens above 
 With farther fanfares greeted, 
 
 Giving- the alarm 
 Of outrage and harm, 
 And summoning- unto the fight 
 The angelic hosts of light. 
 At once Satan and all his fiends commence 
 Scaling the terraces in legions dense. 
 Swarming upon them, like a flight 
 Of locusts black as night, 
 Seizing the buttresses and jutting frets, 
 And clambering up the parapets. 
 And he who is Apollyon, 
 Who is Ahriman, 
 Who is Abaddon, who is Lucifer, 
 Who is Beelzebub, who is Siva sinister, 
 Who is Arimanes, who is Asmodeus, 
 
 Who is Eblis, Hades, Erebus, 
 The King of Terrors, the Prince of Evil, 
 The King of Hell, Satan, th' incarnate Devil, 
 
 Led them on the storm, 
 In shape portentous and deform. 
 
 Upon him sat 
 The figure hideous and dread 
 
 Of a gigantic bat, 
 With huge black wings outspread, 
 In stature stupendous, 
 In aspect most tremendous. 
 
 Like a giant bat, with black wings wide unpent. 
 Up and up he went 
 Battlement after battlement ; 
 And terrace after terrace trod, 
 From heaven unto heaven, seeking God. 
 In vain the angels 
 The terraces defending 
 Push out their pointed spears 
 
 At him ascending. 
 
 Their fieriest assaults are unavailing, 
 As up and up he steadily went scaling, 
 In victorious escalade 
 Undaunted, unafraid. 
 His myriads of fiends behind 
 After him swarmed. 
 With courage blind 
 The heavens they stormed, 
 Seizing the battlements,
 
 THE ASSAULT ON THE SEVENTY THOUSAND HEAVENS. 55 
 
 And tearing down 
 The crystal coping's of the celestial town, 
 
 Breaching the walls 
 And pouring through the apertures, 
 
 Entering through loopholes 
 And through embrasures, 
 
 Carrying the courts, and battering the gates. 
 Thus heaven after heaven they gained, 
 
 While succour waits. 
 Into the holy sanctuaries they burst, 
 
 Plundering all, 
 Rifling, destroying, pillaging 
 
 In furious brawl ; 
 Then out would rush 
 With new impetuous rage, 
 For higher heavens and richer glut 
 
 Their lust t' assuage. 
 
 Now were the angels and archangels out, 
 Captains of hosts upon each fortified redoubt. 
 Up poured the fiends in overwhelming millions, 
 Bent to possess the glittering pavilions, 
 Still forcing way with desperate persistence. 
 Heaven after heaven they gained, and crushed 
 
 resistance. 
 
 Satan himself was nigh 
 Now halfway up the sky. 
 
 Nay more for sixty thousand heavens he had passed, 
 And in his grasp already seemed the last. 
 Now did his fiends below, 
 Who hard behind him pour, 
 Hear from the heights above 
 His boisterous roar 
 His roar of triumph 
 At the sight appearing 
 Of the last Seventieth Thousandth heaven, . 
 
 Which he was nearing-. 
 This lent new courage to their escalade, 
 This made the timorous no more afraid, 
 This made the bold perform new prodigies. 
 Triumph ! was the cry. 
 Victory was nigh. 
 
 Now was the fearful battle at its height. 
 Now waxed the climax of the fight. 
 
 For what with the crashing 
 Of the towers that fell to ground, 
 
 The grinding and smashing 
 Of the crystal round, 
 
 The battlements down dashing 
 In ruins prone that fell, 
 
 The armour's clang and clashing 
 In every citadel, 
 
 The walls cracking
 
 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 With thunderous reports, 
 
 The noisy sacking 
 Of the celestial courts, 
 
 The devils' yells to see their foes defeated, 
 With fiercer. yells all up the sky repeated, 
 The desperate battering 
 At the gates of gold, 
 In hubbub clattering 
 Sixty thousand fold, 
 The buttresses shaking, 
 The bastions quaking, 
 
 The blows shattering 
 The bulwarks that still hold, 
 All mixed with the roar of the fight 
 
 Now at its height 
 Such din, such deafening noise 
 
 Arose, which never ceases, 
 
 It seemed as if the universe were going to pieces. 
 And at the raging uproar 
 
 With which the world was riven, 
 
 God trembled in his last and SeventiethThousandth Heaven. 
 He in celestial repose and calm 
 Full well opined what strange assault befell ; 
 How y holy Heaven's beatitude and balm 
 Was broken in upon by fiends of hell. 
 Yet knew he not they had progressed so well, 
 Till the last crash the heavens' vault came rending. 
 And looking o'er his pearly citadel, 
 Satan he saw, his toilsome journey ending-, 
 The last few terraces of captured heaven ascending. 
 Satan and God each other recognised. 
 And Satan cried with blasphemy supreme : 
 " Hither I come, as I have thee advised, 
 To wrest by battle what my own I deem. 
 Thy empire is a phantom and a dream. 
 Mine is the kingdom, mine is Heaven's throne. 
 Myself the King of Heaven I esteem, 
 Not thee, who newly to a king hast grown. 
 Long ere thou wert begotten, did I Heaven own. 
 " Wherefore yield up what to thee not pertains. 
 Off from thy throne, usurper ! Let Heav'n hear. 
 That its right king and lawful sovereign reigns." 
 Thus cried he drawing nearer and more near, 
 With strides stupendous scaling tier on tier, 
 Till, the last terrace escaladed so, 
 He stept unconquerable, without fear, 
 On to the pearly pinnacle aglow 
 
 Of all the seventy thousand heavens ranged below. 
 Here God, enwreathed in cherubims and light, 
 Sat throned on emerald 'mid calm profound. 
 Satan undazzled, gloomy as the night, 
 Pushed through the glittering circle him around,
 
 THE ASSAULT ON THE SEVENTY THOUSAND HEAVENS. 57 
 
 And in his arms the King- of Heaven he wound. 
 Forthwith the twain in fearful wrestle wheeled. 
 The angels shrieked ; such sight did them confound. 
 Such efforts do they make, each ne'er to yield, 
 
 That the whole pyramid of heavens swayed and reeled. 
 They on the peak to all the hosts below 
 In figures huge gigantically loom, 
 Each labouring the other down to throw 
 The shelving precipice sheer to his doom. 
 All from the summit fled, and left full room 
 For such a combat ; and the twain alone 
 Wrestled and reeled in lightning and in gloom. 
 Monstrous, portentous, were their figures shown, 
 
 And their huge shadows sheer o'er heaven's vault were 
 
 thrown. 
 
 The hosts below paused in amazement lost 
 At such tremendous scene unparalleled. 
 But soon they were in new convulsions tossed, 
 Such ardour and such fury them impelled. 
 They rushed to fray afresh with zeal unquelled. 
 And as each thought their champion in the clouds 
 Victorious, their hopes of triumph swelled, 
 Fiercer the fight they plied with cries aloud, 
 
 Ang-els and devils mixed in dense and tossing crowd. 
 Meanwhile upon the top Satan and God 
 Wrestled and reeled and rocked and closed and clung. 
 The platform broad unsteadily they trod. 
 Oft at the edge right over it they hung, 
 As if next instant down they would be flung 
 The Seventy Thousand Heavens' yawning face. 
 In wrestle dire they writhed and wrenched and wrung, 
 Till Satan marked how God a breathing-space 
 
 Showed symptoms of fatigue in his close-locked embrace. 
 With joy he marked it, and the hour divining 
 When this tremendous conflict should have close, 
 With fiercer force his ample arms entwining 
 Cried to the myriads of swarming foes 
 " Haste, marshal up your powers, and God enclose ! 
 Saturn, whom we call Atarcuph, draw near. 
 Now it is time to break your long- repose. 
 Haste ! Bring your hosts and scythe and hour-glass near, 
 
 And this base empire's thread of life for ever shear." 
 Up swarming with his hosts old Saturn came, 
 Brandishing scythe and hour-glass. Him God saw, 
 And tremors coursed through his celestial frame 
 At end impending to his realm and law, 
 The more that Satan's fearful strength, with awe 
 He felt was stronger as his own strength failed. 
 Up to the spot the angel cohorts draw, 
 Amazed to see their monarch thus assailed ; 
 
 And losing heart in fell disorder shrieked and wailed. 
 Then Satan bracing up his powers, to nerve
 
 58 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART II. 
 
 Himself to final triumph, with a roar 
 
 Cried aloud : " If I can but preserve 
 
 My shape heroic for few moments more, 
 
 Heav'n and Heav'n's throne are mine for evermore." 
 
 He spoke, and pressed the fray with zeal renewed, 
 
 Eager to have the dreadful combat o'er, 
 
 And crush for ever in his grapple rude 
 
 His foe, w r hose swiftly failing- force with joy he viewed. 
 All his wild followers shouted Victory ! 
 But suddenly with awe and stupefaction 
 They saw him changing- unaccountably 
 Into a mass of worms and putrefaction, 
 Which loosed his limbs and paralysed his action. 
 The foul corruption o'er his frame made way, 
 And swimming, sweltering to his distraction, 
 Left him a monument to there survey 
 
 Shapeless, of fell corruption, filth and foul decay. 
 
 THE AGONY OF GOD. 
 
 With yells the devils fled, 
 Seized with sudden dread 
 At such a sight, at such defeat, 
 When victory was nigh complete. 
 The angel cohorts mustering, 
 In closer levies clustering, 
 With courage new 
 Their foes pursue, 
 And desperate the battle grew 
 One side endeavouring to hold 
 Until their champion his shape renews, 
 The others bent with courage bold 
 The favourable hour to use, 
 And strike confusion in their foes. 
 So fearful fight arose. 
 In crowds they rushed, 
 In myriads crushed, 
 To join the fatal fray 
 And furious me'le'e. 
 So stormy fight went raging, 
 
 Each side in total force with desperate zeal engaging. 
 But over the tossing host 
 Floated the Holy Ghost, 
 
 Like radiant rainbow spreading his pavilion, 
 All shimmering with a hue 
 Of amethyst and blue, 
 And flushing military bright vermilion. 
 At this so kindly sign 
 Of influence divine 
 
 The scattered angels into rally blended. 
 Then tempests shook the world, 
 And in a storm unfurled
 
 THE AGONY OF GOD. 59 
 
 The Son amid a whirlwind dense descended. 
 Darkness and clouds were spread 
 O'er all the fight o'erhead. 
 
 Confusion reigned and measureless obstruction. 
 Mid the involving night 
 None knew, none saw aright. 
 
 Meanwhile the twin celestials wrought destruction. 
 But on the platform broad 
 Of highest Heaven, God 
 Lay in an agony, like death eternal, 
 By fell fatigue and numb 
 O'ermastered, overcome, 
 Annihilated nigh by force infernal. 
 His adversary dire 
 Not equally did tire, 
 
 But was destroyed to his immense distraction 
 Changing to putrid vile 
 Foul filth that did defile, 
 
 Till reft of power of motion and of action. 
 Then with a fearful yell 
 Incontinent he fell 
 
 Right through the storming fight that raged beneath him, 
 Through smoke and storm and fight 
 Passing in headlong flight 
 Unto the hell that waited to enwreath him. 
 The angel armies strong 
 Triumphant rushed along. 
 
 But while they conquered and their foemen trembled, 
 'Mid ruined heavens around 
 Without a stir or sound 
 God lay in agony that death resembled.
 
 60 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 PART III. 
 
 THE THEOGONY, 
 OR THE GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL, 
 
 Deep in the night of Chaos was God born. 
 
 Satan was Chaos, Matter, Darkness dead, 
 
 Eternal Dark, where never came a morn, 
 
 Nor any rosy sunbeams overhead. 
 
 Life, light, and lovely being all were fled. 
 
 Being was not, till God had come to birth. 
 
 Form had no symmetry, light was not shed. 
 
 But when He came, then came all things of worth. 
 Of light, of form, of being, there was then no dearth. 
 
 In Chaos' deepest midnight came a ray, 
 
 A thin grey streak amid th' engulfing gloom. 
 
 And that was God that filmy beam of grey,- 
 
 Which 'mid the darkness muffled as the tomb 
 
 Did first the pitchy element illume. 
 
 And gradually growing as it crept, 
 
 It found continually still more room. 
 
 Amid the darkness that around it slept 
 God was the first grey ray that into being leapt. 
 
 The Devil nursed it to his own destruction, 
 
 Rocking the lovely ray in clouds of black, 
 
 Which, like a cradle of a weird construction, 
 
 Or like vast nursing arms spread 'mid the rack, 
 
 Screened the young beam from deepening gloom's attack. 
 
 Thus Satan fondly the young daybeam nursed, 
 
 And dandled to his own o'erthrow, alack ! 
 
 The doomed destroyer of his race accursed 
 And all his goblin brood amid the gloom immersed. 
 
 For little and by little the young beam 
 
 Began to spread its radiance through the sky 
 
 To lengthen to a shaft of golden gleam, 
 
 To broaden to a band of light on high, 
 
 To brighten and to grow continually, 
 
 Till to a belt of glittering light it grew. 
 
 Then other rays break forth its station nigh, 
 
 And other radiant streaks of dazzling hue 
 The lovely light it pours with other rays renew. 
 
 Satan and all his fiends looked on surprised 
 
 At such a sight, so lovely and so new. 
 
 In fascination held, thev ne'er surmised
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OK GOD AND THE DEVIL. 6l 
 
 That this young galaxy of golden hue 
 Would all their empire and their realm undo. 
 Wherefore they looked, in peerless pleasure lost, 
 (Alack ! the sight they evermore did rue) 
 And watched how cloud on cloud aside it tossed, 
 And the whole spacious East with bars of light it crossed. 
 Gold was the ray. Then other colours came, 
 The blue, the red, the fawn, the radiant rose, 
 A thousand tints of colour and of name 
 Excelling hues ! whose mingling mixture flows 
 Into a glittering flood that ceaseless grows, 
 Till it o'erspreads one tract of ancient Night 
 \Vith a mysterious thing which no one knows, 
 Which all beholders witched and dazzled quite 
 And that was heaven-sent celestial lovely Light. 
 On, on it spread, annexing tract on tract, 
 Region on region, endless space on space, 
 Beating the black funereal gloom aback, 
 And raining gold and silver in its place, 
 W 7 hose showering spangles with their sheen erase 
 The thick and murky elements of shade, 
 
 Until at length one half of heaven's face 
 With lovely light and radiance was arrayed. 
 So far it spread, the lovely beam but there it stayed. 
 Too late the fiends grew jealous of the light, 
 
 Which half the world had conquered, and possessed 
 
 Divided reign with Chaos and old Night. 
 
 Too late it was their lost domain to wrest 
 
 From holy light, w r hich where it lightened blessed. 
 
 Only their grim reflections they saw cast, 
 
 Their goblin shadows stretched from east to west ; 
 
 And from their shapes, which ugliness did blast, 
 They knew and owned themselves devils and fiends at last. 
 
 Satan himself, as monstrous as the sky, 
 
 Beheld his foul reflection with dismay. 
 
 Ne'er had he guessed himself unto the eye 
 
 So ugly and so foul until that day. 
 
 Confusion covered him and sore dismay, 
 
 The more that he beheld his comrades near, 
 
 At the foul lineaments he did display 
 
 Exchanging looks of insult and of sneer, 
 And greeting his fell shape with mocking jibe and jeer. 
 
 Smit with exasperation at the thought 
 
 That aught could minish or demean his power, 
 
 Satan arose, resolved to bring to naught 
 
 And crush this new creation of an hour 
 
 With one mere act of his almighty power. 
 
 Straightway incensed towards the light he went. 
 
 But endless distance 'twixt them seemed to lower. 
 
 Baffled and baulked he was in his intent 
 To reach the glittering goal on which his heart was bent. 
 
 In vain he sought to reach, to beat the ray.
 
 62 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 His idle blows fell on the empty air. 
 
 Meanwhile he heard the jeering far-away 
 
 Laughter of all his fiends assembled there, 
 
 Who watched with mirth his efforts and despair. 
 
 And from the heavens came a trumpet cry, 
 
 Which rang re-echoed through the silent air 
 
 " Jehovah ! Young Jehovah ! He is nigh. 
 He comes with light and joy the world to gratify." 
 
 The Devil heard, and knew that Light indeed 
 
 Was as himself a person and a God, 
 
 Who to his throne was destined to succeed, 
 
 And curb his furious reign with iron rod. 
 
 A rival now he had, who heaven trod, 
 
 Of all things best, as he of all things worst 
 
 Jehovah ! Young Jehovah ! fellow God ! 
 
 The doomed destroyer of his race accursed 
 And all his goblin brood amid the gloom immersed. 
 
 Gnashing his teeth with fury and with spleen, 
 
 Satan yelled dire defiance to his foe. 
 
 But the calm light beamed on, undimmed, serene. 
 
 And he, baulked, baffled, knew not where to go, 
 
 Which way his devilish assaults to throw, 
 
 So as to reach that fountain pure and bright. 
 
 At last, ashamed of hesitation slow, 
 
 He harked around him all his hosts of night, 
 And swept in full tornado to the heavenly height. 
 
 But where they mounted, darkness followed them. 
 
 Ever 'twas dark where they and Satan were. 
 
 They ne'er could rid by any stratagem 
 
 The thick, opaque, and dusky-folding air, 
 
 Which them o'ershadowed wheresoe'er they fare, 
 
 Sometimes enclosing them in total gloom, 
 
 But sometimes rifted, and to their despair 
 
 Showing at endless distance, where't did loom, 
 The dazzling home of light which did the heaven illume. 
 
 Further and further, and not near and nearer, 
 
 Each hour they seemed to further float away 
 
 From the bright space, which clearer now and clearer 
 
 Disseminated far its golden ray. 
 
 They felt themselves more hopelessly astray 
 
 Each moment that their dusky wings they fanned. 
 
 Indeed the spot was not for things like they. 
 
 No lot had they in that celestial land, 
 Whose brightness dazzled and destroyed their robber band. 
 
 Too bright the light for their bats' eyes to bear ; 
 
 Wherefore still far and further off they fare 
 
 In foul bewilderment and dull despair, 
 
 Flying on random road, they knew not where. 
 
 Satan was unprepared for such a flight : 
 
 In might audacious, he would all things dare, 
 
 But knew not how to guide his legions right 
 'Mid shores of holiest purity and matchless light.
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 63, 
 
 Wherefore their plight grew evermore the worse. 
 
 Mutiny rose amid the robber band. 
 
 Oaths, imprecations raged, and curse on curse 
 
 Arose uproarious on every hand. 
 
 Some were for one way ; some another planned. 
 
 At length, as men who have essayed a crime, 
 
 And fly with hidden faces, scared and banned, 
 
 They turned abashed after a tedious time, 
 And sought a more congenial and a darker clime. 
 
 This in the depths of Erebus they found, 
 
 Th' antipodes of heaven and of light, 
 
 Where ancient Chaos still maintains its ground, 
 
 And all the hoary empire of old Night 
 
 Holds unimpaired its patrimonial right 
 
 Of darkness, discord, and eternal fray ; 
 
 Where deepest gloom, which drapes the prospect quite, 
 
 Is ne'er disturbed by any golden ray, 
 Which can through chink unguarded thither make its way. 
 
 One half the universe it occupied 
 
 Room large enough for Satan and his rout 
 
 To live and spread abroad on every side, 
 
 Without the wish or care to wander out ; 
 
 Since they confessed themselves beyond all doubt 
 
 Unable to assail the heavenly king. 
 
 Here therefore they abode in boisterous rout, 
 
 Abandoned unto strife and quarrelling, 
 For discord sweet forgetting every other thing. 
 
 But God, who marked and knew their devilish power^ 
 
 Raised a huge bastion at the heaven's verge, 
 
 Lest in an ill and evil-omened hour 
 
 In momentary amity they urge 
 
 Their fell battalions thither, and emerge 
 
 Full in the white and crystal courts of light. 
 
 Wherefore he bastion raised against such scourge, 
 
 A mighty bastion of stupendous height, 
 Bare adamant, as black as everlasting night. 
 
 Lo ! we have told how once two devils, lost 
 
 Upon the plains of darkness far away, 
 
 This ample bastion in their wanderings crossed, 
 
 And through a chink unguarded heaven survey : 
 
 How the intelligence they did convey 
 
 Unto the grisly potentate of hell, 
 
 Who, plunged in deepest gloom for aeons grey, 
 
 His mem'ry rased by spiritual spell, 
 Had sheer forgotten all the past which in 't did dwell. 
 
 Lo ! we have told the conflict and the fight, 
 
 The fight, the duel, and how Satan fell, 
 
 Precipitated from the realms of light 
 
 Sheer to the pit and inky flames of hell. 
 
 Past each celestial shining citadel 
 
 Through hordes of fighters, ever down he fled 
 
 At dizzy pace beyond all parallel.
 
 64 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 The huge array of hosts embattled 
 
 Made way and opened wide, as through their ranks he sped. 
 Like some huge tree on Switzer clilf that grew 
 And towered a beacon, seen afar and nigh, 
 But woodmen's axes now have hewn it through, 
 And from its peak it falls with mighty sigh, 
 Precipitated downward from the sky 
 E'en to the lowest vale where boils the stream 
 Past cliffs, and pines, and platforms, it doth fly, 
 Past snows and icy torrents bathed in steam, 
 
 Which follow one another like a changing dream : 
 So Satan fell past glittering lights and fire, 
 Past roaring battles and past clashing fray, 
 Through clouds of smoke and sheets of darkness dire, 
 Which oft the fiery fight concealing lay ; 
 Through tracts of gloom more distant far than they, 
 Where every sound of battling strife did cease, 
 Where horrors grew unto his soul alway, 
 The horror terrible of rest and peace, 
 
 Which every fathom now did mightily increase. 
 Quieter and quieter, stiller and more still 
 Now grew the dire and blasted prospects round, 
 Whose quiet his soul with agonies did fill. 
 Past hills of ashes, horrors to astound, 
 Exhausted worlds where fluttered not a sound, 
 Craters extinct, and dead volcanoes old, 
 Where ne'er a spark of quickening fire was found 
 Down, down he dived at dizzy pace untold, 
 
 Powerless his headlong course to slacken or withhold. 
 At length amid this waste of silence wan, 
 Half-finished worlds and darkness terrible, 
 He came to tracts where noises dire began 
 To raise the hubbubs which he loved so well, 
 And knew himself approaching utter hell 
 Hell with loud noise and constant discord fed. 
 And here at length more leisurely he fell ; 
 And ceased deep in the land of darkness dread, 
 
 Which half the universe divides with heav'n o'erhead. 
 Here in the cool dank dark refreshed he lay, 
 And smoothed the plumage of his ruffled wings, 
 To disappointment and distress a prey, 
 And tortured by the never-ceasing stings 
 Of foiled ambition, which sore rancour brings. 
 Long lay he thus, inactive, torpid, dead, 
 Not caring for his power nor any things, 
 Listening the tramp of hosts discomfited, 
 
 Who came to join their king amid his kingdom dread. 
 For ages must he thus in trance have lain, 
 Uninterested and indifferent, 
 Dull, sullen, fuming, but devoid of pain, 
 And gathering strength for a renewed intent 
 And desperate enterprise malevolent.
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 65 
 
 What time passed by can be computed only 
 In heaven (for ages in their cycles went, 
 While he in sullen fit, morose and lonely, 
 
 Lay on the floor of hell brooding- on vengeance only). 
 What time, what endless time had thus passed by 
 Can ne'er be known when news there came to him 
 Of room for enterprise amid the sky. 
 For 'twas reported God had 'gun to limn 
 The outlines of a world, well planned and trim, 
 Where he intended peace and love to dwell ; 
 Nay, that Himself in manly shape and limb 
 Was there resolved as man with man to dwell, 
 
 And show his creatures dear how that he loved them well. 
 Lo ! we have told how Satan in the act 
 Caught God of making this fair world of life, 
 And how he it insidiously attacked, 
 And sowed the seeds of poison, death, and strife, 
 Blights, woes and griefs, with tears and sorrows rife. 
 But to the height of this great argument 
 Have we not soared how Satan sought in strife, 
 While God in form of weakling man was pent, 
 
 To him destroy with sin and death malevolent. 
 When God in fulness of the time appeared 
 As a young babe to our sweet Saviour be, 
 The Devil swift to Herod's palace neared, 
 And in his ear that foul iniquity 
 Whispered to doom to death and butchery 
 All babes in Bethlehem that season born. 
 But yet in vain Satan's fell treachery ! 
 And disappointment did his brow adorn 
 
 With one more wrinkle, and his breast with one more thorn. 
 Then threw he dire temptations in Christ's way 
 The sin of pride, the lust of worldly power, 
 The soft delights of sense, allurements gay, 
 Seeking to him entangle every hour, 
 Knowing full well that sin could overpower 
 His life divine as potently as death. 
 But all in vain these clouds o'er Jesus lower. 
 Humble, pure, modest, he continueth, 
 
 And all the world doth list the kindly words he saith. 
 Then out of flesh, as alabaster white, 
 In soft alluring curves of peerless mould, 
 The Devil framed a vision of delight 
 A lovely maid with hair of shimmering gold, 
 And breasts which such fair glories did enfold, 
 And shape which wooed so well to dalliance, 
 That none e'er saw her beauty and controlled 
 His hot desires to peace and sufferance, 
 
 But burned to banquet on her charms' luxuriance. 
 This lovely maid he brought upon the scene, 
 Calling her beauteous Mary Magdalene ; 
 And where in Bethany 'neath date trees green
 
 66 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 Christ walked in peace unruffled and serene, 
 She suddenly appeared in all the sheen 
 And glow of beauty, passion, love and fire. 
 With soft intoxicants, enticements keen, 
 To sap his modest youth she did aspire, 
 
 And kindle in his breast delicious sweet desire. 
 But oh !-in vain her wonted arts she tries; 
 In vain her witching words, her melting eyes, 
 Her fair artillery of looks and sighs, 
 Her flesh which like a velvet pasture lies, 
 Her passions warm, revealed without disguise. 
 Each new allurement withers ere she throws it. 
 Each new seduction, ere it reach him, dies. 
 Baffled are all her toils, and well she knows it; 
 
 Humbled her wanton mind, and contritely she shows it. 
 Before his chaste and unimpassioned beauty, 
 His virtue unapproachable, divine, 
 She bows her head, forgets her destined duty, 
 And all her soul but longeth to resign 
 To his sweet influence, henceforth to shine 
 The dearest and the truest of his saints, 
 Abandoning that servitude malign 
 Which covered her with cankers and with taints, 
 
 And was the fruitful cause of her remorse and plaints. 
 Wherefore a box of costly spikenard buying 
 Of perfume infinite and richness rare, 
 She bathed the feet of holy Jesus lying, 
 And kissed them oft, and wiped them with the fair 
 And shining nimbus of her golden hair 
 In all its wealth of ringlet and of tress, 
 Bowing her head in penitence and prayer. 
 And thus imploring him her soul to bless 
 
 She strove to wipe away her guilt and wickedness. 
 Again were Satan's fell designs frustrated, 
 Again his instrument was faulty found. 
 The praise and glory of the God he hated 
 To this alone did all his schemes redound ! 
 Yet not relaxed his subtlety profound. 
 And next he tried, alas ! with deeper skill, 
 Sweet Jesus to entrap with trick renowned. 
 He whispered him, that if he had the will, 
 
 His precious gospel soon the total world would fill. 
 The means were simple. He had but to wear 
 The crown of Judah and be called a king, 
 And his sweet words their precious lore would bear 
 O'er all the world; his Gospel would take wing; 
 And in the ears of all mankind would ring 
 The message of good will and peace to men. 
 Nay, if were opposition threatening, 
 A kingly edict could be issued then, 
 
 Which would to Christ reduce e'en foes most alien. 
 And Christ's sweet soul fell victim to the plan.
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 67 
 
 He hearkened ; and he listened ; and obeyed. 
 And there arose a treasonable man, 
 Barabbas, bravo desperate, to aid 
 The cunning- game which traitorous Satan played. 
 He o'er the will of Jesus triumphing, 
 For his own ends, did our sweet Lord persuade, 
 That he would make him of Judaea the king, ' 
 And him triumphant in Jerusalem would bring. 
 Riding then into brave Jerusalem, 
 
 Jesus beautiful, O brother mine, 
 Too little didst thou weet the stratagem 
 And Satan's deep perfidious design 
 How all the world against thee did combine, 
 How bravos and conspirers did but use 
 Thee as their instrument for plot malign, 
 Who made thee king- and monarch of the Jews, 
 
 With riot, pillage, spoil, thy empire to abuse. 
 
 How thou wert taken and with them condemned ! 
 
 How thou wert taunted, mocked, derided, jeered ! 
 
 And the bad author of the dire attempt, 
 
 Barabbas, was before the judgment cleared. 
 
 But our dear Lord, whom all should have revered, 
 
 With other twain, partakers of the plot, 
 
 Was on the cruel cross in torture reared, 
 
 While crowds around, unpitying his lot, 
 Reviled and railed and flouted, though he heeded not. 
 
 He on the cross, for our transgressions torn, 
 
 Hung like a rose nailed to a garden wall. 
 
 He, sweeter rose, possessed no piercing thorn, 
 
 Wherewith to wound those foes inimical, 
 
 Who him abused with force tyrannical, 
 
 And whose fell hands had lifted him on high. 
 
 Few friends bewailed his fate funereal. 
 
 But veils of darkness draped the sunlit sky, 
 And Nature groaned to see the God of Nature die. 
 
 Then Satan triumphed. And in Hell that night 
 
 Tumultuary Pandemonium 
 
 Arose and inexpressible delight 
 
 To think how God at length was overcome, 
 
 And that he did so easily succumb, 
 
 Caught in the shape of man, without resistance. 
 
 Wherefore all hell was busy with the hum 
 
 Of feast and revel, which with loud persistence 
 Increased, and spread its uproar into endless distance. 
 
 For two nights' space the revel was protracted. 
 
 All hell was blessed ; but Satan he was glorious, 
 
 And loudly vaunted of the part he'd acted, 
 
 And by what craft o'er God he was victorious. 
 
 " Aha ! " he laughed. " 'Twas by no strife laborious 
 
 That I have added Heaven's throne to Hell ; 
 
 But by a trick perhaps you'll say inglorious : 
 
 1 waited until God as man did dwell,
 
 68 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 Then killed him, like a lobster caught without its shell." 
 Hereat the vaults of Hell in black clouds rolling- 
 Re-echoed to the laughter of their lord, 
 Who turned from boasting and his soul consoling 
 With dreams of future glory, to the board 
 And all the luxuries it did afford. 
 He quaffed, he roared, and his base self beglutted 
 With the best drinks and viands of hell's hoard, 
 And bade all eat until all hell was gutted ; 
 
 For that in Heaven soon with prey they should be glutted. 
 Wherefore all ate, all drank, all banqueted, 
 And staves and bawdy songs around were sung, 
 How God, their enemy, at last was dead, 
 And how all day upon a cross he hung, 
 And then at eve into a tomb was flung, 
 Where now he lay for two days dead and cold. 
 And thus they shouted as they staved each bung : 
 " Down with the courts of crystal and of gold ! 
 
 Hurrah for Night primeval and for Chaos old ! " 
 For two long nights then having revelled thus, 
 When the first Easter morn came peeping grey, 
 Up they arose with shouts uproarious, 
 Meaning towards the tomb to make their way 
 Where the dead God of Earth and Heaven lay, 
 Humiliated, crushed, discomfited. 
 Up they arose at dawn of Easter Day 
 A motley troop, with Satan at their head. 
 
 Their dusky wings for leagues through the dun air were 
 
 spread. 
 
 Sheer o'er the hoar illimitable deep, 
 The realms of Chaos and of ancient Night, 
 Which lie 'twixt Hell and Earth, in troop they sweep, 
 Till by the morn, as on they speed their flight, 
 They had the hill of Calvary in sight, 
 Where still three crosses, empty now, were reared, 
 All gilded in the breaking morning light. 
 The devils laughed, and cried, as these appeared, 
 
 " Here the Great God of Heaven was slain, whom once we 
 
 feared. ' ' 
 
 " Yes," answered Satan. " And within the tomb 
 Beneath yon hill his corpse to you I'll show, 
 That ye may see by what almighty doom 
 I have struck down and pulverised my foe. 
 His trip to earth has brought him death and woe. 
 (Dotard, to put himself within my power !) 
 'T has made me King of Heaven, did he but know. 
 The thrones of heaven and earth are now my dower. 
 
 Of hell, earth, heav'n am I the monarch from this hour." 
 Thus vaunting and thus flushed, in force they flew 
 Into the garden, where the sepulchre 
 Hewn out of solid rock, fresh, fragrant, new, 
 Lay sealed and peaceful and without a stir,
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 69 
 
 Striking strange awe in those breasts sinister. 
 
 Then Satan rolling back the monstrous stone 
 
 Stept in to seize the corpse without demur. 
 
 But started back, and cried in stuttering tone, 
 "What ho, my masters ! We are foiled. The bird has flown !" 
 
 Then angry tumult rose. The devils rave 
 
 With cries uproarious and jibe on jibe, 
 
 Vituperating Satan as a knave, 
 
 And fool, and clown ('tis thus they him describe) 
 
 For having led his estimable tribe 
 
 To such a mare's nest as this empty tomb. 
 
 W r ith taunts, jeers, insults, rang their diatribe. 
 
 " Thou must have known," cried some. " Thou didst 
 
 presume," 
 Cried others, " on our ignorance, this fraud to boom." 
 
 " Insensate fool," thus others chimed in, 
 
 " Who deem'st thyself superior to God, 
 
 But yet art only king of Hell and Sin, 
 
 And scarce his equal would we ne'er had trod 
 
 This crazy road at thy contemptuous nod, 
 
 Which us has brought but scorn and ridicule ! " 
 
 " Hence, Arch-Deceiver ! travesty of God ! " 
 
 Thus others cried; "unworthy art to rule, 
 Since e'en to thy most faithful fiends art proved a fool." 
 
 Abashed, ashamed, a self-acknowledged fool, 
 
 The Devil with a hearty curse at all 
 
 Took wing, and left them raging with misrule, 
 
 Delivered up to quarrel, strife and brawl 
 
 Betwixt themselves, unheeding what befall. 
 
 He far away flew to repose his soul, 
 
 And heal his wounded pride, which had such fall, 
 
 To utter Chaos, where the billows roll 
 Of elemental masses raging past control. 
 
 Here eldest Night and Chaos, Chance and Death, 
 
 Four minions fit, with ministry concur 
 
 To heal the grief with which he laboureth. 
 
 Not thence for ages would he gladly stir ; 
 
 Such fell despair in his breast sinister, 
 
 Such dire chagrin and disappointment keen, 
 
 Rankle and torture and to madness spur. 
 
 Fain would he in that tempest-tossed terrene, 
 Soothed by its roar, digest his rage at what has been. 
 
 But he remembers what great force he is, 
 
 What power one half he in the world possesseth, 
 
 That while he fuming there and nerveless lies 
 
 The everlasting conflict on him presseth 
 
 Twixt him and God, which God's fair world distresseth. 
 
 What though the fight has ended in defeat? 
 
 One day fair victory the vanquished blesseth. 
 
 Wherefore he Chaos left with pinions fleet, 
 And sallied forth again the God of Heaven to meet. 
 
 So do they war, and so will war again.
 
 7O THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 So they contend, with energy renewed, 
 
 To win dominion of the world's domain. 
 
 No end is there to their eternal feud. 
 
 For ever and for ever unsubdued, 
 
 Close interlaced throughout the Universe, 
 
 Close interlocked they writhe in wrestle rude. 
 
 One blasts all living Nature with a curse, 
 And one doth showers of blessings o'er the world disperse. 
 
 From measureless eternity The Twain 
 
 In unrelenting enmity persist. 
 
 Without the one, could not the one remain ; 
 
 Without the one, the other not exist. 
 
 It was a secret e'en by angels missed, 
 
 What bond of union knit The Two in one ; 
 
 Till Satan as he fell from heaven hissed 
 
 " Older than God am I, though crushed, undone. 
 Him I begot. He is my offspring and my son." 
 
 Shrieking thus loud, and with an awful yell 
 
 Of imprecation dire, to lowest hell 
 
 Sheer from the Seventieth Thousandth Heaven he fell, 
 
 His eyes like craters, terrible as hell, 
 
 His brow with ashes loaded like a fell, 
 
 And all himself insufferably old. 
 
 His outcry, " I begot him," all heard well. 
 
 Some said 'twas blasphemy. But some more bold 
 Vowed it was likely news, and that the truth he told. 
 
 E'en thus the angels spake themselves among, 
 
 Now for the first time hearing the strange news 
 
 (It was when he and God in wrestle clung.) 
 
 As for the devils, they could not but choose 
 
 With such a vaunt their vanity t' amuse. 
 
 And one of them 'twas Atarcuph the old 
 
 Said they might all believe the startling news; 
 
 For he remembered how in time untold 
 Satan's almighty power the total world controlled. 
 
 Thus was the genealogy complete 
 
 By Satan told, of the Terrific Twain, 
 
 By heaven believed with caution, as 'twas meet, 
 
 By hell received with jubilation vain, 
 
 And which all hell still doughtily maintain. 
 
 Howe'er the rightful lineage ensued, 
 
 The Sovereigns Twin imperially reign 
 
 O'er all the world with vigour unsubdued, 
 And strive to-day as ages since in ceaseless feud. 
 
 God, mighty Ormuzd, offers us his terms, 
 
 And Satan, Ahriman, doth offer his 
 
 To list beneath the banner of their arms, 
 
 And fight in serried ranks and companies 
 
 Like gallant soldiers 'gainst their enemies. 
 
 Which service shall we take? This well to know, 
 
 Must tax our spirit, spur our energies. 
 
 Upon our answer, be it Yea or No,
 
 THE THEOGONY, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 71 
 
 Depends eternal weal or everlasting woe. 
 
 The Devil thus invites us to his side : 
 
 " I offer soaring intellectual pride, 
 
 Contempt of God and all the world beside. 
 
 I offer man a nature deified 
 
 By high ambition richly gratified ; 
 
 A heart whose passions nothing need restrain, 
 
 A will unscrupulous, to all o'erride. 
 
 I offer victory with heaps of slain ; 
 Contempt of death, all things to dare and dare again. 
 
 " I offer greed and envy satisfied. 
 
 I offer slights requited, grudges paid. 
 
 I offer hatred quenched in homicide. 
 
 1 offer treacheries successful played, 
 
 Triumph o'er weakness helpless and afraid, 
 
 Cold callous disregard of human pain, 
 
 The reckless joy of riot and of raid. 
 
 I offer haughty scorn and deep disdain, 
 And rich revenge, which tingles sweet through every vein. 
 
 " I offer wealth from suff'ring millions wrung 
 
 To feed and satisfy one man alone ; 
 
 Allurements for the senses and the tongue 
 
 At glittering banquets o'er with roses strown, 
 
 Or feasts of gluttony enjoyed alone. 
 
 I offer vices exquisite and rare 
 
 Refined to heights delicious and unknown ; 
 
 And hand in hand with such delightful fare 
 A nature cold and dead, where nought but self hath share. 
 
 " Lo ! what I offer, and lo ! what I threat 
 
 To all alike who take and who decline 
 
 My precious boons : since neither I forget 
 
 Chastise my foes with punishment condign, 
 
 And persecute my friends for sport malign. 
 
 I threaten misery, I threaten care, 
 
 Incessant cause to sorrow and repine ; 
 
 I threaten woe, anxiety, despair, 
 And grinding poverty, most hard of ills to bear. 
 
 " I threaten sickness and I threaten pain, 
 
 Excruciating tortures, dire disease, 
 
 Agonies sent again and yet again, 
 
 Heart-rending griefs, and such fell things as these 
 
 I threaten doubt, distraction, want of ease, 
 
 Care that can change the chestnut hair to white, 
 
 Hot scalding tears, horrors the blood to freeze, 
 
 Madness that gleams awhile with fitful light, 
 And burieth the soul in black and cloudy night. 
 
 " These can I bring, for Ahriman am I, 
 
 Lord of all plagues, all sorrows and all death. 
 
 These will I bring, at once, capriciously, 
 
 Without a warning given, in a breath, 
 
 On all to whom my fancy travelleth, 
 
 And most on those who my allegiance flee.
 
 72 THE EPIC OK GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 Them will I smite with fate that harroweth, 
 And make example, for the world to see 
 How its supremacy belongs by right to me." 
 
 lord, most terrible, O sovereign fell, 
 Most formidable are thy menaces, 
 
 Which speak the awful parentage of Hell ; 
 Yet eke as terrible thy promises, 
 Which would seduce to such iniquities, 
 That in my weakliness I know not well 
 Not which to choose (for neither do me please) 
 But which is worst, my soul to thee to sell, 
 Or thee defy, and face thy wrath past parallel. 
 Thus did I cry, distracted, ill at ease, 
 In this great universe, where I abide 
 So weak in face of mighty powers like these. 
 Weak, puny, feeble, frightened, terrified, 
 How was I fain from Ahriman to hide ! 
 Lest he should seize me in his ruthless claws, 
 And 'gainst my will should clutch me to his side 
 
 1 trembled ; for the thought my being awes, 
 How half the universe is subject to his laws. 
 
 Then in my sore distress I did decide 
 To go to Ormuzd and with him abide. 
 And creeping near to him in sore distress I cried : 
 " What art thou, Ormuzd? what wilt thou afford, 
 That I should take thee as my master and my lord? " 
 Then with a voice as sweet as harp celestial, 
 Transcending far all melody terrestrial, 
 A tone like many flutes divinely breathing, 
 Their limpid notes in liquid warble wreathing, 
 When thus I cried, 
 Ormuzd replied : 
 " I am the first pale streak of grey 
 In the dark night, 
 Which winning way 
 And shedding day 
 Makes all things light. 
 I am the first dim ray of hope 
 
 In deep despair, 
 
 Which gives the first faint strength to cope, 
 Which gives the energy to hope, 
 Which gives the faculty and scope 
 
 To vanquish care. 
 I am the healer of all woe. 
 
 I bring relief. 
 I smoothe the wrinkles on the brow. 
 
 I banish grief. 
 In fell affliction I am sleep ; 
 In dire fatigue am slumber deep. 
 In wearing sorrow I am balm, 
 In restless trouble soothing calm. 
 I offer peace, I offer rest,
 
 THE THEOGONV, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 73 
 
 Of all the boons to man the best, 
 
 Of all estates the loveliest, 
 
 Sweet sleep and rest, 
 Oblivion blest, 
 Sweet rest and sleep, 
 Refreshing- rest and slumber deep 
 Which in oblivion doth steep, 
 All cares to smoothe, 
 All woes to soothe. 
 
 Come unto me, ye weary and ye sore, 
 
 And I will give you rest for evermore, 
 
 Eternal blest oblivion of your woes 
 
 And everlasting undisturbed repose. 
 
 Such is the boon which I to man can give. 
 
 Ye weary, whom I love, come with me live." 
 Then other words did I hear Ormuzd say, 
 As on my knees before His throne I pray : 
 " Deep in the nig'ht of Chaos was I born. 
 The world was then how lonely, how forlorn ! 
 Yea ! but at length that world of dark and sin, 
 Chaos, showed weakness, and then I crept in. 
 I crept in like a ray which doth illume 
 The dark black sky, th' opaque and darkling gloom 
 A thin grey ray which shimmered in the night. 
 Lo ! I have come, and half the world is light." 
 And other words did I most dimly hear, 
 Nor know, inditing, if I heard them clear : 
 " I am the bloom of Evil. I proceed 
 From evil as the flower springs from the seed. 
 First came the Evil, and then came the Good 
 Succession strange, and hardly understood ! 
 Evil doth change, and to new shapes it rangeth. 
 But Good is permanent ; it never changeth. 
 All change is weakness. And the change of Sin 
 Alloweth Good the cranny to creep in. 
 Evil doth perish like a rotting seed, 
 And from the perished core doth Good proceed. 
 Seeds in the ground of putrefying corn 
 Unsightly die, and lovely wheat is born. 
 Soil soils the bulb ; decay strikes dead and chilly ; 
 And from the black corruption steals the lily. 
 Soul-crushing care strikes lifeless and forlorn, 
 And from the bleak despair lo ! hope is born. 
 Thus a succession strange doth hold its sway. 
 Alway it hath been, and will be alway. 
 Satan showed weakness in almighty power, 
 And the good God was born that self-same hour. 
 Chaos grew weak ; its blossom was a ray. 
 Night doth decay, and lo ! its flower is day. 
 Evil doth perish, and its bloom is Good." 
 These things I heard, and half but understood. 
 Then still upon my knees before his throne
 
 74 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 I cried once more in supplicating tone : 
 " O Holy Ormuzd, beatific being, 
 Must we believe on thee without thee seeing? 
 Is thy celestial beauty (say men right?) 
 Invisible for ever to our sight? " 
 Then with the warbling voice of flutes euphonious 
 Ormuzd replied in melody harmonious : 
 " Yea, can ye see 
 And look on me. 
 My beauty so celestial 
 Is not denied to eyes terrestrial, 
 Nor is it pale 
 Behind a veil, 
 
 But in full loveliness and undimmed sheen 
 About, around, may it be seen. 
 In the clear air, 
 I am there. 
 In the blue sky, 
 Lo ! there am I. 
 The dark deep sea 
 Doth mirror me. 
 In silent spots 
 With foliage green, 
 There may I be seen. 
 
 And in the fragrant rose so sweet and fair, 
 Do ye not see that I am there? 
 Lo ! I am in the sun at noon 
 
 In all its splendour ; 
 And in the mellow moon, 
 
 Serene and tender. 
 And in the stars at night, 
 The heaven sprinkling, 
 And mutely twinkling, 
 I shine with inexpressible delight. 
 I revel in the waves beneath the sunlight glancing. 
 I joy in children's laughter, their mirth and happy dancing. 
 The smiling look, the sparkling eye, 
 Blithe mirth and rippling gaiety 
 Lo ! all these things are mine, 
 And in their midst I shine. 
 I am the flash divine 
 
 Which lends them life and being. 
 All that is light am I, 
 All that is bright am I, 
 All that is great, all that is high, 
 All that is noble to the eye 
 Look there for me, 
 I bid, and -ye 
 
 Will not be long of seeing. 
 The beauty of women, 
 The beauty of song, 
 The beaut) 7 and gleam
 
 THE THEOGONV, OR GENEALOGY OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. 75 
 
 That to jewels belong 
 All that is my beauty, and there am I seen 
 In glitter and inextinguishable sheen. 
 Thus can ye see me. 
 That ye may know me, 
 Now will I say more things that show me, 
 Where ye may seek me, 
 Where ye may meet me, 
 Where ye may recognise and greet me. 
 
 When there is hope with cheering ray, 
 When there is joy and pleasure gay, 
 Then I am present, then I stay. 
 \Vhen tears and anguish and despair 
 And such dire gloomy things are there 
 I fly away, 
 I do not stay. 
 
 When lovely thoughts do circulate around, 
 With light divine 
 
 I shine. 
 
 When evil ones do in their room abound, 
 I fly. They are not mine. 
 Where there is mercy, 
 Where there is kindness, 
 
 I stay. 
 
 Where there is justice, 
 Where there is blindness, 
 
 I fly away. 
 
 Where there is comfort 
 And sweet compassion, 
 
 I stay. 
 
 Where there is vengeance, 
 Malice, passion, 
 
 I fly away. 
 Where there is suffering, anguish, pain, 
 
 I fly away. 
 But I return again 
 
 To heal it. 
 
 Where there is- woe, I do not stay, 
 But back in time I make my way 
 To comfort those who feel it. 
 I hie away where there is grief ; 
 But back I come to give relief. 
 Where there are tears, I fly them. 
 
 But I return to dr^y them. 
 I am the healer of all woe. 
 I smoothe the furrows on each brow. 
 Lo ! I am comfort in your sorrow. 
 
 I fly away ; 
 
 Grief holds its own to-day ; 
 But I come on the morrow. 
 In your affliction I am balm, 
 In your distraction I am calm ;
 
 76 THE EPIC OF GOD AND THE DEVIL. PART III. 
 
 And when with lifelong weariness oppressed, 
 Lo ! I am sleep, and everlasting rest." 
 
 Then I still on my knees before his throne 
 Did for the third time cry in supplicating tone : 
 " To see Thee and to know Thee now to me is given. 
 If thus thou art, say what and where is Heaven?" 
 " Heaven is hereafter. And for many a year 
 'Twill be hereafter ; for it is not here. 
 When all the evil which the world doth charge, 
 In volume limitless spread out at large, 
 Shall by insinuating good be overcome and purified 
 Good, which is now one drop of pure amid the inky tide 
 When good, obliterating little and by little, 
 Annihilateth evil to its utmost tittle, 
 That not a speck of evil shall befall, 
 But good and God they shall be all in all 
 That will be Heaven, and that is why 
 Heaven is hereafter and not nigh 
 
 A limitless futurity ! 
 Yet will it come and when 't has come, 
 
 All will be one Elysium. 
 So much, O mortal man, to you is given 
 To know and to be told of Heaven. 
 Wait not for Heaven, which ye cannot see. 
 Be mine now ! now ! and ye will find your Heaven 
 
 with me." 
 
 Then came the sound of flutes divinely breathing, 
 My soul and sense in rapture sweet enwreathing, 
 So that I wanted never 
 From such ecstasy to sever. 
 Then I filled with yearning 
 To Ormuzd turning 
 Went to his side, 
 There to abide 
 From this time forth for ever. 
 
 THE END.
 
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