OF THE 
 
 U N I VERS ITY 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 8SI 
 
 C78 7 p 
 
NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for 
 each Lost Book is $50.00. 
 
 The person charging this material is responsible for 
 its return to the library from which it was withdrawn 
 on or before the Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- 
 nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. 
 
 To renew cal! Telephone Center, 333-8400 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 
 L161— 0-1096 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 k PRISON-RHYME. 
 
 IN TEN BOOKS. 
 
 BY THOMAS COOPER, 
 
 THE CHAKTIST. 
 
 Xon'fccm : 
 
 J. WATSON, 3, QUEEN’S HEAD PASSAGE, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1851 
 
■ ... . 
 
- -A/- O/ ■ ’ : T 6 ,r v^r 
 
 C 7 17f 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following ‘ Prison-Rhyme/ part of an historical romance, 
 a series of simple tales, and a small Hebrew guide, were the 
 fruits of two years and eleven weeks’ confinement in Stafford 
 Gaol. The first idea of creating a poem, in which the spirits 
 ot suicides should be the actors or conversers, arose in my mind 
 ten years ago ; but a line might never have been composed 
 except for my imprisonment ; and the political strife in which 
 I have been engaged has certainly given a form and colour to 
 my thoughts which they could not have worn had my con- 
 ceptions been realized at an earlier period. An individual 
 who bent over th& last and wielded th& awl till three and twenty, 
 — struggling, amidst weak health and deprivation to acquire' 
 a knowledge of languages,— and whose experience in after- 
 life was, at first, limited to the humble sphere of a school 
 master, and never enlarged beyond that of a laborious worker 
 on a newspaper, could scarcely have constructed a fabric of 
 verse embodying more than a few poetical generalities. My 
 persecutors have, at least, the merit of assisting to give a 
 more robust character to my verse ; though I most assuredly 
 owe them no love for the days and nights of agony I endured 
 from neuralgia, rheumatism, and I know not what other tor- 
 ments, occasioned by a damp sleeping cell, added to the 
 generally injurious influences of imprisonment. 
 
 I have not the slightest wish to enlarge on the circumstances 
 of suffering under which my verses have been strung toge- 
 ther : and only deprecate that severity of criticism which a 
 Chartist rhymer must expect to encounter, by observing that 
 I am painfully conscious my book contains many passages 
 correspondingly feeble with the debilitated state in which I 
 often strove to urge on the completion of my design. For 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 reasons that involve the fate of others, as well as my own, I 
 cannot omit to add a few remarks in this preface relative to 
 the causes of our imprisonment. 
 
 The first six stanzas of the following poem may be consi- 
 dered as embodying a speech I delivered to the Colliers on 
 strike, in the Staffordshire Potteries, on the 15th of August, 
 1842. Without either purposing, aiding and abetting, or even 
 knowing of an outbreak till it had occurred, I regret to add 
 that my address was followed by the demolition and burning 
 of several houses, and by other acts of violence. I, and 
 others, were apprehended and tried. My first trial was for 
 the most falsely alleged crime of burning and demolishing, or 
 assisting to burn and demolish. Sir Wm. Follett, then Soli- 
 citor-General, used every endeavour to procure a conviction. 
 I pleaded my own cause, a number of respectable working- 
 men proved my alibi, and Judge Tindal intimated his convic- 
 tion that the evidence did not prove I was guilty. The jury 
 returned a verdict in my favour ; and I was thus saved from 
 transportation, perhaps for the term of my natural life, but 
 was remanded for trial on two other indictments. 
 
 In a few minutes, I met a melancholy proof of the extreme 
 peril in which I had just been placed, for, on being taken back 
 to the dungeon beneath the Court-House, — a filthy, stifling 
 cell to which prisoners are brought from the gaol on the day 
 of trial, and which, in the language of the degraded beings 
 who usually occupy it, is called the ( glory- hole/— I found 
 William Ellis walking about the room, and on taking his 
 hand and speaking to him for the first time in my life, I 
 learned that he had just been sentenced to twenty-one years’ 
 transportation for a like alleged offence to that for which I 
 had been tried and acquitted. Yet he assured me, in the most 
 solemn manner, that he was utterly innocent, and was asleep 
 in his bed at Burslem, at the time it had been sworn he was 
 on the scene at the fire of Hanley. The aged woman with 
 whom he and his wife lodged made oath to the truth of this ; 
 but in spite of corroborative proofs of his innocence, he was 
 convicted on the strange testimony of one man who said that 
 he first saw a tall figure with its back towards him, at the 
 fires, — that he then, for a few moments, saw the side face 
 blacked , of this figure, — and that he could swear it was Ellis! 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 5 
 
 On the false evidence of this man, alone, has poor Ellis been 
 banished from his country, — leaving his wife and children to 
 the bitterest contumely and insult from his enemies. Yet, 
 he had committed a crime, and it was so indelibly chronicled 
 in the memories of the Staffordshire magnates that the gove- 
 nor of Stafford Gaol reminded him of it, as soon as he was 
 brought to prison. He had been guilty of an act of dis- 
 courtesy to the High Sheriff of the County ! At a County 
 Meeting called to congratulate the Queen on her ‘provi- 
 dential deliverance’ from ‘assassination’ by the silly boy, 
 Oxford,— Ellis, at the head of the Chartists of the Pot- 
 teries and the democratic shoemakers of Stafford, opposed 
 the grandee when named as president of the meeting, suc- 
 ceeded in getting a working-man into the chair, by an over- 
 whelming show of hands, and the intended ‘ congratulation’ 
 ended in nought. Such was poor Ellis’s real crime. Did if, 
 deserve twenty-one years’ transportation ? Let his bitterest 
 enemies answer, — for even they are now professing their belief 
 that Ellis was not at the fires. 
 
 I am, then, not the heaviest sufferer by false accusation, — 
 yet I feel I have great cause to complain of the crookedness 
 of their procedures on the part of our prosecutors ; and, 
 though it may subject me to a sneer for squeamish taste, 1 
 cannot help observing that I could have submitted to im- 
 prisonment without giving the lawyers much trouble, if the 
 proceedings against myself and others had been less crooked. 
 When the third indictment against me was read, — for ‘ sedi- 
 tion’ simply, — I told the Judge that I would at once plead 
 ‘ guilty,’ and give the Court no further trouble, if he would, 
 as a lawyer, assure me that it was sedition to advise men to 
 ‘ cease labour until the People’s Charter became the law of 
 the land,’ — for that I had so advised the Colliers in the Pot- 
 teries, and would not deny it : but Sir Nicholas Tyndal said 
 he could not assure me that it was sedition ! 
 
 After being at liberty some time, on bail, I was tried before 
 Judge Erskine, for a ‘seditious conspiracy’ with William 
 Ellis, John Richards, and Joseph Capper. Again, I felt, dis- 
 content at the crookedness of the law or custom that rendered 
 it possible for me to stand indicted for conspiracy with the 
 poor exile, whom I had never seen nor communicated with 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 in my life till we became prisoners. My discontent rose to 
 stern resolve, however, as soon as I found, by the opening 
 speech of counsel, that it was intended, by what I con- 
 sidered most villainous unfairness, to revive all the old 
 charges of c aiding to burn and demolish’ in this second trial, 
 although under an indictment for conspiracy only. My Judge 
 acted worthily for one who bears the honoured name of Ers- 
 kine, and allowed me all the fair-play an Englishman could 
 desire who had to plead his own cause, without lawyer or 
 counsel, against four regular gownsmen with horse-hair wigs. 
 The struggle lasted ten days, and the County papers made testy 
 complaints of “ the insolent daring of a Chartist, who had 
 thrown the whole county business of Staffordshire, and Shrop- 
 shire, and Herefordshire into disorder but they were, of 
 course, quite blind to the mean-spirited injustice which had 
 girt me up to fight against it. We were found ‘guilty/ as a 
 matter of course, but the result was to me a victory ; for I so 
 completely succeeded in laying bare the falsehood of the wit- 
 nesses who affirmed I had been seen in the immediate neigh- 
 bourhood of the fires, that the jury told the judge they did 
 not wish to have that part of his lordship’s notes read to 
 them which contained the evidence of the said witnesses, but 
 preferred that his lordship should write “ mistake” thereon 
 instead. My aged friend John Richards, and myself, were 
 called up for judgment in the Court of Queen’s Bench some 
 weeks after, and Lord Denman, Sir John Patteson, and Sir 
 John Williams there read out the word “mistake,” as in- 
 serted in Judge Erskine’s notes ; and thus openly proclaimed 
 the fact that my enemies had failed in their attempt to fix 
 the brand of felony upon me. 
 
 I make no doubt but that many will be disposed still to 
 think and say, that however far I might be from intending to 
 excite to violence, since violence followed my address, it is 
 but just that I have suffered for it. I beg to say, however, 
 that I hold a very contrary opinion. If an Englishman ex- 
 cites his wronged fellow-countrymen to a legal and constitu- 
 tutional course, (and Lord Chief Justice Tindal told the 
 Stafford jury that now the old Combination Act was abolish- 
 ed, it was perfectly legal and constitutional for men to agree 
 to cease labour, until the People’s Charter became law,) it 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 surely is not the person who so excites them that ought to be 
 neld responsible for the violence they may commit under an 
 enraged sense of wrong, but the Government who wrongs them. 
 I appeal to Englishmen of all shades of politics whether this 
 is not the judgment we pass on all the fortunate revolutions 
 that have occurred in our history. 
 
 Yet Sir William Follett, who again used his decaying 
 strength, the hour before judgment was passed upon us in 
 the Bench, pointed to me with an austere look, and said, 
 “ This man is the chief author of the violence that occurred, 
 and I conjure your lordships to pass a severe sentence on the 
 prisoner Cooper.” 
 
 Scarcely three years have passed, and the great lawyer is 
 no more. He wronged me, but I think of him with no vin- 
 dictive feeling, for my imprisonment has opened to me a 
 nobler source of satisfaction than he could ever derive from 
 all his honours. He amassed wealth, but the Times , alluding 
 to the “frequent unhappy disappointments” occasioned by 
 Sir William Follett’s non-attendance on cases he undertook 
 to plead, says — “ So often did they occur, that solicitors and 
 clients, in the agony of disaster and defeat, were in the habit 
 of saying that Sir William often took briefs when he must 
 have known that he could not attend in court : and as barris- 
 ters never return fees, the suitor sometimes found that he 
 lost his money and missed his advocate at a moment when 
 he could badly spare either.” X am poor, and have been 
 plunged into more than two hundred pounds’ debt by the 
 persecution of my enemies ; but I have the consolation to 
 know that my course was dictated by heartfelt zeal to relieve 
 the sufferings and oppressions of my fellow-men. He was 
 entombed with pomp, and a host of ti|Jed great ones, of 
 every shade of party, attended the laying of his clay in the 
 grave ; and they purpose now to erect a monument to his 
 memory. Let them build it : the self-educated shoemaker 
 has also reared his ; — and, despite its imperfections, he has a 
 calm confidence that, though the product of poverty, and 
 euffering, and wrong, it will outlast the posthumous stone- 
 block that may be erected to perpetuate the memory of the 
 titled lawyer. 
 
 134, Blackfriars Road, London. 
 
 Avgust 1, 1845. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ro THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 Circumstances over which I had no control prevented the 
 re-issue of my ‘ Prison-Rhyme,’ when the first edition was 
 sold off, more than a year ago. Ill health afterwards dis- 
 abled me from proceeding with the correction of numerous 
 unartistic rhymes and other errors, as well as misprints, 
 which are to be found in the first edition. Having attempted 
 to remove some of these imperfections, I have been, at length, 
 enabled to bring out my book anew, and in a cheaper form, 
 believing that my own order, the Working-Class, would wil- 
 lingly purchase a body of verse written, at least, with the 
 intent to further their interests, if its price brought the pos- 
 session of it within their means. I have also added several 
 historical and explanatory notes to those which were at first 
 given ; and have thus, I trust, rendered the present, more 
 peculiarly, a c Peoj^e’s Edition.’ 
 
 * 7, Park Place, Knightsbridge, 
 
 London, November 1, 1847. 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORI OF SUICIDES. 
 
DEDICATORY SONNET 
 
 TO THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Right noble age-fellow, whose speech and thought 
 Proclaim thee other than the supple throng 
 Who glide Life’s custom-smoothed path along, — 
 Prescription’s easy slaves, — strangers to doubt, 
 Because they never think ! — a lay untaught 
 I offer thee. Receive the humble song, — 
 
 A tribute of the feeble to the strong 
 Of inward ken, — for that the theme is fraught 
 With dreams of Reason’s high enfranchisement. 
 
 Illustrious Schiller’s limner, unto thee 
 Mind’s freedom must be precious, — or what lent 
 His toil its light, and what fires thine ? The free 
 Of soul with quenchless zeal must ever glow 
 To spread the freedom which their own minds know. 
 
 Stafford Gaol, 
 
 May 3, 1845. 
 
PUB&ATOHY OF SUICIDES 
 
 BOOK THE FIRST 
 
 I. 
 
 Slaves, toil no more ! Why delve, and moil, and pine, 
 To glut the tyrant-forgers of your chain? 
 
 Slaves, toil no more ! Up, from the midnight mine, 
 Summon your swarthy thousands to the plain; 
 
 Beneath the bright sun marshalled, swell the strain 
 Of Liberty; and, while the lordlings view 
 Your banded hosts, with stricken heart and brain, 
 Shout, as one man , — 1 Toil we no more renew, 
 
 ‘ Until, the Many cease their slavery to the Few!’ 
 
 ii. 
 
 ‘ We’ll crouch, and toil, and weave, no more — to weep !* 
 Exclaim your brothers from the weary loom : 
 
 Yea, now, they swear, with one resolve, dread, deep, 
 
 ‘ We’ll toil no more — to win a pauper’s doom !’ 
 
 And, while the millions swear, fell Famine’s gloom 
 Spreads from their haggard faces like a cloud 
 Big with the fear and darkness of the tomb. 
 
 How, ’neath its terrors, are the tyrants bowed ! [Proud! 
 Slaves, toil no more — to starve ! Go forth, and tame the 
 
 hi. 
 
 And why not tame them all ? Of more than clay 
 Do your high lords proclaim themselves ? Of blood 
 Illustrious boast, they ? or, that reason’s ray 
 Beams from the brows of Rollo’s robber-brood [1] 
 
 More brightly than from yours ? Let them make good 
 Their vaunt of nobleness — or now confess 
 The majesty of all ! Raise ye the feud — 
 
 Not, like their sires, to murder and possess ; 
 
 But for unbounded power to gladden and to bless. 
 
12 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV, 
 
 What say ye, — that the priests proclaim content ? 
 
 So taught their Master, who the hungry fed 
 As well as taught, who wept with men, and bent, 
 
 In gentleness and love, o’er bier and bed 
 Where wretchedness was found, until it fled ? 
 
 Rebuked he not the false ones, till his zeal 
 Drew down their hellish rage upon his head ? 
 
 And who, that yearns for world-spread human weal, 
 Doth not, ere long, the weight of priestly vengeance feel? 
 
 v. 
 
 Away ! — the howl of wolves in sheep’s disguise 
 Why suffer ye to fill your ears ? — their pride 
 Why suffer ye to stalk before your eyes ? 
 
 Behold, in pomp, the purple prelate ride 
 And, on the beggar by his chariot’s side 
 Frown sullenly, although in rags and shame 
 His brother cries for food ! Up, swell the tide 
 Of retribution, till ye end the game 
 Long practised by sleek priests in old Religion’s name. 
 
 vr. 
 
 Slaves, toil no more ! Despite their boast, ev’n kings 
 Must cease to sit in pride, — without your toil: 
 
 Spite of their sanctity, — the surpliced things 
 Who through all time, have thirsted to embroil 
 Man with his neighbour, and pollute the soil 
 Of holiest mother Earth with brother’s gore, — 
 
 Join but to fold your hands, and ye will foil 
 To utter helplessness, — yea, to the core 
 Strike their pale craft with paler death ! Slaves, toil no more ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 For that these words of truth I boldly spake 
 To Labour’s children in their agony 
 Of want and insult ; and, like men awake 
 After drugg’d slumbers, they did wildly flee 
 To do they knew not what, — until, with glee, 
 
 The cellar of a Christian priest they found, 
 
 And with its poison fired their misery 
 To mad revenge, — swift hurling to the ground 
 And flames — bed, cassock, wine-cups of the tipler gowned: 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 13 
 
 mi. 
 
 For that I boldly spake these words of truth; 
 
 And the starved multitude,- — to fury wrought 
 By sense of injury, and void of ruth, — 
 
 Rushed forth to deeds of recklessness, but nought 
 Achieved of freedom, since, nor plan, nor thought 
 Their might directed ; for this treason foul 
 ’Gainst evil tyrants, I was hither brought 
 A captive, — ’mid the vain derisive howl 
 Of some who thought the iron now should pierce my soul. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Let them howl on ! Their note, perchance, may change : 
 The earthquake oft is presaged by dull rest : 
 
 Kings may, to-morrow, feel its heavings strange ! 
 
 For my lorn dove, who droopeth in her nest, 
 
 I mourn, in tenderness ; but, to this breast 
 Again to clasp my meek one I confide 
 With fervid trustfulness ! Still self-possest, 
 
 Since Truth shall one day triumph, — let betide 
 What may, within these bars in patience I can ’bide. 
 
 x. 
 
 I had a vision, on my prison-bed, 
 
 Which took its tinct from the mind’s waking throes: 
 Of patriot blood on field and scaffold shed; 
 
 Of martyrs’ ashes; of the demon foes 
 Ubiquitous, relentless, that oppose 
 And track, through life, the footsteps of the brave 
 Who champion Truth ; of Evil that arose 
 Within the universe of Good, and gave 
 To sovereign Man the soul to live his brother’s slave; 
 
 XI. 
 
 Of knowledge which, from sire to son bequeathed, 
 Hath ever on the Few with bounty smiled ; 
 
 But, on the Many, wastingly hath breathed 
 A pestilence, from the scourged crowd that piled, 
 
 Of yore, the pyramids, to the dwarfed child 
 Whose fragile bloom steam and starvation blast; 
 
 Of specious arts, whereby the bees beguiled, 
 
 Yield to the sable drones their sweet repast, 
 
 And creep, themselves, the path to heaven by pious fast; 
 
14 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII 
 
 Of infamy for him who gives himself 
 A sacrifice to stem the tyrants’ rage ; 
 
 And, for the tyrants’ pander, — peerage, pelf, 
 
 And honours blazed with lies on hist’ry’s page $ 
 
 Of giant Wrong who, fed, from age to age, 
 
 With man’s best blood and woman’s purest tears, 
 
 Seems with our poor humanity to wage 
 Exterminating war ; of hopes and fears 
 That mock the human worm from youth to grayest years ; 
 
 XIII. 
 
 I, waking, thought or dreamt, — for thoughts are dreams 
 At best, — until, in weariness of heart, 
 
 I cried — Is life worth having ? Earth but teems 
 With floods of evil : ’tis one sordid mart 
 Where consciences for gold, without a smart, 
 
 Are sold; and holiest names are gravest cheats: 
 
 Men, from their cradles, learn to play a part 
 At plundering each other : He who beats, 
 
 On his weak neighbour, swift, the plund’ ring trick repeats. 
 
 xiv. 
 
 Is life worth having ? Or, is he most wise 
 Who, with death-potion its fierce fever slakes, 
 
 And ends, self-drugg’d, his mortal miseries; 
 
 Can he be guilty who, at once, forsakes 
 The agony which, sure as death, o’ertakes, 
 
 Early or late, all who with wrong contend ? 
 
 Since Power this earth a clime of misery makes 
 For him who will not to its godhead bend — [wend f 
 Why to th’ enfranchised grave with sluggish foot-steps 
 
 xv. 
 
 Thus feebly pondering, with troubled brain, 
 
 The right of suffering man to consummate, 
 Uiisummoned, his high trust, my heart grew fain 
 To slay the incubus that on it sate, 
 
 Breeding disgust of life and jaundiced hate. 
 Forthwith, I strove the mind’s turmoil to quell 
 By imaging that joy all-eievate 
 Which through earth’s universal heart shall swell 
 When over land and sea hath rung Oppression’s knell 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 15 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But sadness checked the strain. Enfever’d Sleep, 
 
 With tardy foot, came last; and, while she bound 
 My limbs in outward death, within the deep 
 Recesses of the brain into life wound 
 These aching thoughts ; yea, into shapes that frowned 
 Or smiled, by turns, with seeming passion rife, 
 
 And descant joined on human themes, though sound 
 Of human voice none uttered : ’twas the strife 
 Of Mind, not audible by mode of mortal life. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Methought I voyaged in the bark of Death, — 
 
 Himself the helmsman, — on a skyless sea, 
 
 Where none of all his passengers drew breath, 
 
 Yet each, instinct with strange vitality, 
 
 Glared from his ghastly eye -balls upon me, 
 
 And then upon that pilot, who upheld 
 
 One chill and fleshless hand so witheringly 
 
 That, while around his boat the hoarse waves swelled, 
 
 It seemed as if their rage that solemn signal quelled. 
 
 XVI II. 
 
 I know not how these mariners I saw : 
 
 No light made visible the grisly crew : 
 
 It seemed a vision of the soul, by law 
 Of corp’ral sense unfettered, and more true 
 Than living things revealed to mortal view. 
 
 Nor can earth’s Babel-syllables unfold 
 Aught that can shadow forth the mystic hue 
 Of myriad creatures, or their monstrous mould, 
 
 Which thwart that dismal sea their hideous hugeness rolled. 
 
 xix. 
 
 Not stature tenlble of mac odon 
 Or mammoth ; longitude of lizards vast, 
 
 Lords of the slime when earth, from chaos won, 
 
 Grew big with primal life, until, aghast, 
 
 She quaked at her strange children ; not all past 
 Or present, which from out the daedal earth, 
 
 The human reptile, latest born, hath classed 
 By guess, cleping it 4 Knowledge,’ for the mirth 
 Of future worms, crawling, in pride to death — from birth; 
 
16 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Not old leviathan, of hulk uncouth; 
 
 Nor fabled kraken, with his sea-borne trail; 
 
 Not all that sages tell, in sober sooth, 
 
 Of the sun’s progeny on Memphic vale, 
 
 Which from redundant Nile his beams exhale ; 
 
 Nor all that phrenzied poets exorcise 
 
 From memory’s grave, then weave with fancies frail ; 
 
 Can image, in their span, or shapes or dyes, 
 
 Those ocean-dwellers huge beholding Death’s emprize. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The voyage, voyagers, and ocean-forms, 
 
 Alike, were strange, and wild, and wonderful. 
 
 But marvels grew ! When, of that sea of storms 
 We reached the shore, the waves at once were lull ; 
 Death and his skiff evanished, and seemed null 
 And void as things that never were ; while they, 
 
 Of late Death’s passengers, so cold and dull, 
 
 Took, with an air of stern resolve, their way 
 Into a gloomy land where startling visions lay. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 All that Death’s ocean shewed of hideousness 
 By living forms in lifeless shapes found here 
 Its paragon : it was a crude excess 
 Of all things dern and doleful, dark and drear : 
 
 No sun to fructify, no flowers to cheer 
 
 Its sullen barrenness: weeds, huge and dank, 
 
 And blossomless as stones, and ever sere, 
 
 Base sustenance from stagnant waters drank, — [rank. 
 Then spread throughout the plain their pois’nous perfume 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Damp, dense, and deathly, yet the climate parched 
 Those silent travellers with raging thirst ; 
 
 But, sick’ning at the slimy pools, they marched 
 Onward, enfevered, fainting; ’till outburst 
 Their burning tongues, as doth a hound’s when curst 
 With madness. Path across that dismal land 
 Was none; and though no life its waters nursed, 
 
 Yet were there fearful sights, on either hand, 
 hat much aflrayed the courage of that ghastly band. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 17 
 
 xxiv. [rock , 
 Chasms yawned, like dragons’ jaws, from what seemed 
 Then closed, with sulphurous smell, and horrid jar, 
 
 And uprose giant cliffs, to gibe and mock, 
 
 As if with demon features, — while, afar, 
 
 Appeared colossal meteors for wild war 
 Gathering their troops terrific, which came on 
 With fury, but, like some portentous star 
 That fear-struck men gaze after — and — ’tis gone ! 
 Vanished those vaporous hosts in that unearthly zone. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Then felt the fainting footmen as if yoked 
 To viewless vehicles they could not move ; 
 
 Yet, fastened by a galling chain, half-choked, 
 
 They still to drag their unseen burthen strove, 
 
 Till the wild crags came toppling from above, 
 Threat’ning to crush the stragglers into nought ; 
 
 When lo ! — some airy necromancy wove 
 
 Around their trembling limbs, with speed of thought, 
 
 A web of gossamer with wizard safety fraught : 
 
 xxvi. , 
 
 And now, as if above the rocks upborne — 
 
 Suspended in mid-air — with vision dazed, 
 
 And swimming brain — past rescue, doomed, forlorn — 
 For some unspeakable perdition raised, 
 
 They seemed; but suddenly, let down, amazed 
 Their forms engulphed amid the swamp beheld, — 
 Where, while they clung unto the weeds, and gazed 
 Upward, in hope to climb, some weird hand felled 
 Their grasp, and o’er their heads the poisoned waters welled. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Yet, on dry land as speedily they stood, — 
 
 Where they again their venturous march prepared, 
 While apparitions from the stagnant flood 
 And murky air, unto the travelers bared 
 Increasing horrors, as they onward fared. — 
 
 Ye may a jest this dreaming rhyme esteem : 
 
 But these strange terrors my rapt spirit shared ; 
 
 And, though it was the journey of a dream, 
 
 Had ye thus dreamt, no jest ye would that journey deem. 
 2 c 
 
18 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 A cavern’s mouth, browed by a giant mound 
 Gave welcome respite to their torturous toil : 
 
 For, entering there, the way-worn wand’rers found 
 The semblance of a subterraneous aisle, 
 
 And walked admiringly, yet feared, the while, 
 Sudden renewal of their suffering plight, 
 
 Or deeper woe whelmed ’neath the rocky pile : 
 
 But, midst their fears, sense of unearthly light 
 Dawned, with a thrill of ease, upon their anxious sight. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Above them curved the likeness of a roof 
 Of woven rock, — strange supernatural glare 
 Diffusing from its tracery, that seemed woof 
 Of masonry more mystical and rare 
 Than devotees of proud cathedralled prayer 
 Witness while worshipping the Nazarene: 
 
 Pride lauding lowliness ! And past compare 
 Of monkish mixtures were the shapes, I ween, 
 
 Of shaft and capital, that ’long that vault were seen. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Not, as with fashion of that gloomy age 
 When Phantasy, in convent bondage bred, 
 
 Drew graces from distraction, — mingling rage 
 Grotesque of apes with ire of angels dread, — 
 
 Aiming all contraries to blend and wed, 
 
 Until with hybrids she had filled the mind, 
 
 And with wild wonderment its powers misled, 
 
 So that, its grasp grown loose and undefined, 
 
 The shaven and shorn enchanters might its freedom bind ; 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Not, as with fashion of that twilight time 
 When sky-born Truth, by priestly hands arrayed 
 In vulgar vestments of the motley mime, 
 
 Played conjuror in “ dim religious” shade, — 
 
 And peasant thrall, by bell and book dismayed, 
 Glanced tremblingly on corbel, niche, and pane, 
 
 Where imp, saint, angel, knight with battle-blade, 
 Griffin, bat, owlet, more befooled the swain, [brain ; 
 Till, when the incense fumed, round swum his wilder d 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 19 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Not, after pattern of old monkish mode; 
 
 Not, as by wand of mitred magic hung, 
 
 The rocky arch that mystic aisle bestrode, — 
 
 While clustered shaft, and twisted pillar sprung 
 Forth from the floor, — and floral festoons flung 
 Their chrystal witchery from base to quoin, — 
 
 And ever-changing shapes in antics clung 
 To shaft and capital, festoon and groin, — 
 
 Seeming all forms of life, all grace of flowers to join ; 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 But unimagined, unconceived, unknown, 
 Unspeakable, by man, seemed all revealed 
 To those awed travellers, as they journeyed on 
 Through that vast aisle, that rather glowed a field 
 Of caverned wonders, where each shape did yield, 
 For evermore new changes, — till the soul, 
 
 Enervate with o’erpiled amazement, reeled 
 And sank, wishing an end unto her dole 
 Of wond’ring — pining, now, for prospect of her goal. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Anon, we entered where the travellers took 
 Their silent way, each to some several home. 
 
 Light fled ; and dim funereal gloom rewoke 
 A solemn sadness through my being. Dome, 
 
 Or cupola, scooped in mid rock, like tomb 
 Primeval, high above me stretched its span 
 Gigantic, vague, — appearing to enwomb 
 A space so vast that there old Death divan 
 Might hold, in mausoleum metropolitan. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Innumerable aisles their paths diverse 
 Forth from this sombrous centre led. And now, 
 
 I first perceived, from law which did coerce 
 
 The vagrant ghosts who reached these realms of woe 
 
 My spirit grew exempt. Sad, gloomy, slow, 
 
 The forms, of late my fellows, I descried 
 Journeying along those aisles,— deep, lasting throe 
 To inchoate, for sin of suicide, 
 
 In clime apportioned to their gloom, or hate, or pride. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 TIIE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI* 
 
 No words revealed to me the end or cause 
 For which those spirits hither came or went ; 
 
 Nor know I if I knew that region’s laws 
 By some strange influences incident 
 Unto its clime ; or whether, now unblent 
 With earth’s gross mould, deep intuition filled 
 The regal mind, — and thus, plenipotent, 
 
 She saw and knew. Suffice it, what she willed [thrilled. 
 To know, that knowledge swift throughout her essence 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Conscious of this her high prerogative, 
 
 The soul for mystic travel girt her thews, 
 
 Intent on viewing shapes she knew must live 
 In land where penance rebel thought subdues 
 Of human worms who venture to refuse 
 The gift of life probational, and death 
 Procure by their own hand, daring accuse 
 The Giver, and defying threatened wrath,— 
 
 Or worn and wearied with the toil of drawing breath. 
 
 xxxvm. 
 
 Methought I sped across the gloomy space 
 From whence diverged each subterranean aisle, 
 Thinking the dome vast porch unto some place 
 Of emblem’d sovereignty, or typic pile 
 Where sceptred suicides in kingly style 
 Might sit, as in some high imperial hall, 
 
 And there eternity itself beguile 
 
 With pregnant descant on their earthly fall, 
 
 On fate, and mortal change, and being spiritual. 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 When lo ! — as if these new imaginings 
 Flowed from the soul with architectural power, 
 
 Or talisman of magic Esterlings 
 
 Were there the unbound mind’s mysterious dower — 
 
 Forthwith disclosed, in high investiture 
 
 Of purple, sceptres, thrones, and diadems, 
 
 A hall of kings assembled gleamed obscure, — 
 
 Fair, — and then bright,— until refulgent streams 
 Of splendour issued! fiom tfyeirjbrows begirt with gems. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 21 
 
 XL. 
 
 Mingled with these sat ancient forms unnamed 
 Monarchal, but by badge or cognizance 
 Vice-regal known, or whose sage look proclaimed 
 The godlike legislator, or proud glance 
 Betokened bold ambition’s heritance 
 On earth of sway despotic. Deeply fraught 
 With wisdom’s lessoning the soul her trance 
 Perceived to be, — ’mid thrones with sculptures wrought 
 Mythic or parabolic, from earth’s legends caught. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 By beam or rafter architectonic 
 Undarken’d, — with a roof of rainbows graced, 
 
 Smiled that wide palace-hall : yet, upward, quick 
 And tim’rous looks old shapes columnar cast, 
 
 That stretched their sinews, as with effort vast. 
 
 To prop the heavenly arch whose fall they feared. 
 Distorted things — abortions of the Past — 
 
 They were : Satyrs, with wild-goats’ legs and beard, 
 And one-eyed Arimasp and Cyclops, there appeared ; 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Scythians, with heel in front, and toes behind, [2] 
 
 On old Imaus known ; and Ethiops dark 
 And headless, wearing mouth and eyes enshrined 
 In their huge breasts ; and countless monsters stark 
 And staring, hymn’d divine by hierarch 
 Of Ganges and old Nile, — with heads, tails, arms, 
 Tusks, horns, confused, of elephant, ape, shark, 
 Serpent, dog, crocodile, or ox : vile swarms 
 Of hideous phantasies, half-sharing human forms. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 In triple colonnade around th’ immense 
 Ellipsis of that hall these creatures stood, — 
 
 Colossal images of ache intense 
 
 And apprehensive dread ; while o’er them bowed 
 
 The arch that still in jewelled beauty glowed. 
 
 Such horror, blent with grace, Apollo’s priest 
 ’Mid strangling folds of Neptune’s serpents shewed, — 
 And still doth shew — enmarbled, undeceased, — 
 
 That breathing stone the Past to gem the Future leased. [3] 
 
22 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Area within, enclosed, of amplitude 
 More spacious stretched than wide circumference 
 Of sculptured temple, by far traveller viewed 
 In Hindoo cave, [4] — or where wild audience 
 The Arab gives to hoar Magnificence 
 Defying Ruin, and in some huge tomb, 
 
 Hewed for a monarch, nightly sleeps, — from whence, 
 
 F th’ morn, he blesses Mecca’s seer, — while gloom 
 Eterne veilsMemnon’s brow beholdingThebes’ sad doom. f5] 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Throughout this column-girt enclosure rose 
 Thrones, — some with fashion of a fortalice 
 Or tower ; some, like cathedralled shrine where vows 
 Are paid to saintly heritor of bliss, 
 
 Shewed niche, and pinnacle, and quaint device 
 Of carven wonder-work ; while some parade 
 Outvied of old renowned Acropolis 
 Or Parthenon, where graceful shaft o’erlaid 
 With bossed entablature Man’s noblest skill displayed. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Significant depicturings of fraud 
 Conjunct with force, — chimaeras blending grim 
 Fierce forms with fascinations, — shapes that awed 
 Pelasgic men in ages old and dim, — 
 
 For metope, along the freize’ broad rim, 
 
 ’Tween gem-dropp’d triglyphs, wore each classic throne : 
 Rapine of harpy, smile of siren prim, 
 
 Lewd lure of lamia, wile of sphinx, and frown 
 Of minotaur and archer-centaur there were shewn. 
 
 XLVI i. 
 
 Or, where a shrine-shaped throne, o’ercanopied 
 With perforated carvery, rose, — a pile 
 Of frail aerial wonder, — typified 
 
 Were Fright and Mischief mixt with Stealth and Guile: 
 ‘Hag rode her broomstaff, flankt with bugbear vile 
 And goggle-eyed hobgoblin, while a host 
 Led by Puck-Hairy mocked with infantile 
 And puny trick the snake that wreathed and tossed 
 His trail around the skull and cross-bones of grim ghost. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 23 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Mute, wonder-stricken, long, methought, I gazed, 
 And, pond’ring, did my vision’s meaning read ; 
 
 Until the tenants of the thrones sense raised 
 Within me of their presence there, flesh-freed. 
 
 No sage interpreter I seemed to need 
 From whom to learn their names : without a veil 
 Unto the soul, the pride, pain, thought, or deed 
 That rent them from earth’s tabernacles frail, 
 
 Lay opened — by some fiat supernatural. — 
 
 XL1X. 
 
 Silver tiara, decked with amethysts 
 
 And sapphires, piling gorgeously above 
 
 His brow, — pearl-studded circlets round his wrists, — 
 
 Gold sceptre mounted by an emerald dove, — 
 
 And dazzling gems of myriad hues enwove 
 Throughout his robes wherein the peerless dye 
 Of rarest murex with the ruby strove 
 For richness, — showed that £oft Assyrian nigh 
 Who closed his life of lust — a self -incendiary. 
 
 L. 
 
 On either side Sardanapalus sat, 
 
 On thrones ornate of ivory and gold, — 
 
 Cloud wrapt, that gray Cathaian autocrat, 
 
 With uneuphonic name [6] in records old 
 Of Orient writ, who did his life enfold 
 With deathly flames ; and that foul glutton, who 
 As sages tell, his maw’s capacious hold 
 To satisfy, worried his spouse, although 
 Full-supper’ d, — Cambes,lord of Lydia’s pampered crew. [7 
 
 * LT. 
 
 Next these, three mystic thrones : the Theban chief 
 Who solved the Sphinx’s riddle, — son and spouse 
 Of Creon’s daughter, — suicide of grief, 
 
 Horror, and madness, joined: sad Nauplius, 
 
 The sire of Palamedes, who his house 
 Brought low by guileful Ithacus deplored ; 
 
 And that Athenian exarch, old iEgeus, 
 
 Who, of his death, fearing his son devoured, 
 
 Left, in the Hellene island-wave a dim record. [8] 
 
24 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII, 
 
 Illustrious less by sheen and garniture 
 Of gold and gems, than by his kingly height 
 Colossal, sat the Hebrew, who a cure 
 For fallen fortunes, in his grievous plight, 
 
 At Endor sought, — but, from the hoary sprite 
 Of Israel’s seer no health or help derived. 
 
 On demi-throne, next, that' disastrous wight 
 Who Baasha’s son of sovereignty deprived, 
 
 In Tirzah, and himself a seven days’ king survived. [91 
 
 Of Ilion’s foes, when stern Pelides fell, 
 
 The boldest, — but of honour shorn, and driven 
 By pride to madness, — with enduring hell 
 Of hate upon his girded brow, though riven 
 From earth, sat Telamon. A haloed heaven 
 Of splendour dawned where crownless Codrus, throned 
 By frowning Ajax, smiled : his soul’s look leaven 
 Of low self-love disdained, — and, still, profound 
 Regard for fatherland seemed in its essence wound. [10] 
 
 Fraternal spirits, — each with civic palm 
 Invested, sceptreless, o’er deepest thought 
 Brooding of things to come, — Lycurgus, calm 
 And dignified and peaceful, sat, and caught 
 With friendly grasp the hand unto him raught 
 Of brave Charondas : these, enthroned ’mid blaze 
 Of kindred light, looked as they would devote 
 Their souls once more to Hades, if the days 
 Returned when men would die their fellow-man to raise.! 11 1 
 
 Traitor to Freedom when the Alban sires 
 Had smitten kings with rout, and made their name 
 A stench, — sat Appius, — he whose lewdling fires 
 The spotless maid had scathed with deathful shame. 
 But that a father’s knife preserved her fame, — 
 Giving to deathless life his Virgin child. [12] 
 
 On more than regal throne, with amorous flame 
 Still glowing in his eyes, next the defiled 
 Decemvir, sat another lust-slave, self-exiled 
 
 LIV. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 2 5 
 
 LVI. 
 
 From his old riot-field, — for such he made 
 
 The earth, that, by strange turns, is cursed with feud 
 
 And sport of monsters. Neighbour to this shade 
 
 Of Antony, and chief of Rome’s huge brood 
 
 Of tyrants, sat the matricide Whom mood 
 
 Of insane merriment to minstrelsy 
 
 Impelled, when, wearied with his game of blood. 
 
 He loosed the fiends of havoc, that, with glee, 
 
 Lit up Rome’s flames, and howled to swell his jubilee. [13] 
 
 LVII. 
 
 The’ imperial patriot, Otho, that to save 
 The blood of thousands shed his own, and quench’d 
 The rage of war, — but vainly, since he gave 
 Earth to a tyrant, — sat next one who drench’d 
 The soil less than he willed with gore, nor blench’d 
 At broken oaths in age, — Maximian, —thrall 
 Of power, though throned. Divided sceptre clench’d 
 Bonosus vile, the drunkard, — of whose fall 
 They said his carcase was ‘ a jug hung by the wall !’ [14] 
 
 LVI II. 
 
 And other revellers in bloody mirth, [15] 
 
 Italian, or Byzantine, arrogant 
 And pride-blown,. sat, as when the slavish earth 
 They shared ; save when on that great combatant 
 Whom Pontic Orient and the rich Levant 
 Owned lord, — proud Mithridates, — timid look 
 They cast: for, as they glanced at him, ascaunt, 
 
 His eye of fire told how he ill could brook [16] 
 
 The dwarfs so near ; — whereat their fear-smit spirits shook. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Neighb’ring stood Juba’s gold and ivory throne, — [17] 
 The Mauritanian : next, with shorn display, 
 
 Sat Nicocles, the Paphian — who alone 
 Fled not dishonour when the conqu’ring sway 
 Of Ptolemy fair Cyprus owned : the way 
 He took his bosom’s queen and daughters fair 
 Took also, — and now shared the chastened ray 
 That clad their chief : a group of Love they were, 
 Among fierce shapes of pride that haughtily sat there. 
 
26 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 Nor was the suicide of softer sex 
 
 By these shewn only. Near the ancient seat 
 
 Of (Edipus, the mystical reflex 
 
 Appeared of her who hasted to complete 
 
 The F.ates’ decree, when Meleager’s feat 
 
 Was known, — burning the billet she had kept 
 
 To save the life, that thence, she loathed. [18] A meet 
 
 Sisterhood, numerous, by Althaea slept, 
 
 Or stonily gazed : eld forms by Mythic names yclept. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 Radiant in widowed beauty, next to these 
 
 Sat she who loved her wandering Teucrian guest, 
 
 And raved to find the faithless one rude seas 
 Had borne away, — till, for her grief-worn breast 
 Within the wave she sought a deathful rest. [19] 
 
 Near Dido sat that mournful mother-queen, 
 
 Meek Sisygambis, who fled life distrest 
 By death of Philip’s son, still more than teen [20] 
 
 That she the slaughter of her discrowned son had seen. 
 
 LXII. 
 
 With ardent glance on her old paramour, 
 
 The soft Triumvir, bending, — amid waste 
 Of grandeur throned, — outvieing, as of yore, 
 
 Earth’s kings in pride, earth’s harlots in unchaste 
 And wanton thought, — sat she from Greek dynast 
 Of Nile descended, asp-stung heritress 
 Of fame for lavish wealth with lavish haste 
 Consumed upon her beauty’s slaves : excess 
 Transcended only by her false heart’s fickleness. [21] 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Apart, in lonely loftiness of soul, 
 
 Sat Boadicea, simple, unadorned, [22] 
 
 Yet seeming with stern virtue to control 
 The scoffing spirit which my thought discerned 
 Within a frivolous crowd that there sojourned 
 In visioned queenly state. — 
 
 But now my trance 
 
 Teemed with more wonder, — for, enrapt, I learned 
 These spirits’ thoughts : no vocal resonance 
 There was: yet soul to soul made mystic utterance. — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 27 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Thy prophecy, sage Spartan, — proudly gibed, 
 
 Amid his pomp, the Chaldee’s glistering shade, — [23] 
 Thy prophecy — grows old : still monarch-tribed 
 And rainbow-vaulted is this hall : they fade 
 Not yet — these regal splendours! Disarrayed 
 We are, by turns; to periodic pam, 
 
 On joyless wand’ rings sent, through bog and glade, 
 O’er crag and rock, or burnt or frore, our stain 
 To purge : yet, in due season, thus restored, we reign ! 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Err’st thou not here, presaging utter change 
 To kingly spirits, as thou err’dst in land 
 Of Lacedsemon old, when system strange 
 By thy fantastic brain was hotly planned, 
 
 To train rude rabble Greeks in self-command, 
 
 And mould their minds to virtue ? Foolish dream 
 Long dissipated ! Spartan, thus divanned, 
 
 Crowned, sceptred, and enthroned, the changeful stream 
 Of ceaseless being shall find our Essences supreme. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Such is my sentence, — from the pregnant past 
 Arguing the future : and in vain they prate 
 Of inborn might up in all minds amassed 
 Who say, — of Hades this unequal state, 
 
 And Earth’s, shall end by the decree of Fate. 
 
 Where are the virtues by thy statutes bred ? 
 
 Our Asia’s conqu’ring hosts — effeminate 
 Esteemed by the rude sires thy black broth fed — 
 Brandish the scymitar o’er their tame children’s head. 
 
 LXV1I. 
 
 There must be conqu’ring lords, and slaves that yield : 
 There hath been, — and there will be. Thou may’st stroke 
 Thy beard, grave scorner, — slighting truth revealed 
 By eld experience ! Wherefore bear their yoke 
 Earth’s mortal millions ? Why, in one age shook 
 From their sire’s shoulders, do the sons upheave 
 And wear it, in the next ? Hath a realm broke 
 Its golden sceptre ? ’Twas but to receive 
 A stranger’s iron rod, — beneath its bruise to grieve. 
 
28 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXVHI 
 
 Danaian,[24] — Monarchs rule by Nature’s law; 
 
 And all who seek Her statutes to disturb, 
 
 Teaching kings’ solemn titles have foul flaw 
 In reason, and the general mind should curb 
 Their sovereign will, or sweep from earth’s wide orb 
 Their honoured name, — know thou, he would uproot 
 All happiness from human hearts, perturb 
 All peace, and fill the world with dissolute 
 And lawless beings tending downwards to the brute. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 What mean, I ask thee, these thronged typic forms, 
 These images of allegoric shape? 
 
 Thou say’st, false-seeing prophet, that dire storms 
 Will burst on Thrones and leave us no escape 
 But yawn of fabled Chaos ! Ha ! a jape 
 It is — such as thou told’st, in olden time, 
 
 When Greeks from Delphi thy return, agape, 
 Expected. Spartan, know, a truth sublime 
 These portraitures set forth, in this mysterious clime. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 This sky of promise-woof, these shapes of strength, 
 These sceptred pomps and blazonries, combine 
 With this vast palace-hall’s imperial length 
 And architectural splendour, by divine 
 Working of Nature, Her superb design 
 To manifest — that She hath firmly set 
 The frame of things — the frame of things benign ! 
 Kings reign by Nature’s law ! I at thy threat 
 Of dissolution laugh! ’Tis like thyself — a cheat! 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 By hybrid forms, like these, the sage or bard 
 Of old pictured deep thoughts : he, prescient 
 Of mortal things, not dimly Mind’s award 
 In after-life foresaw : and thus hath lent 
 Wise Nature, here, familiar emblems, meant 
 T’ infix our spirits’ rev’rence of Her high 
 Unchangeable decrees. Other intent 
 Wombed in the soul o’ th’ world, if thou descry, 
 Lacon,[25] these Potencies, with me, thy proof defy ! — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 29 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 He ceased, but the Laconian answered not,' 
 
 Save with a smile ; whereat, in subtle guise, 
 
 The spirit of pale Chow the theme upcaught, 
 
 Echoing the proud Assyrian’s prophecies 
 Of endless royalty. — 
 
 To mysterize 
 
 I scorn, — he said: the sage of great Cathay [26] 
 
 By allegory taught, — the teacher wise 
 Before all mortals; but, now freed from clay, 
 
 Truth’s visage all unveiled Mind may to Mind display. 
 
 LXXII I. 
 
 The sacred sage who aims with sanctions strong 
 Of faith and fear, fable and prodigy, 
 
 To fence the throne, humanely to prolong 
 Peace, order, seeks : for peace and order flee 
 That state disrupt by anarch Liberty — 
 
 The wild destructive demon ! And when peace 
 And order fade, fades every good : while free 
 Confusion’s vot’ries call a realm, decrease, 
 
 Therein, all polished forms and winning courtesies : 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 These constitute the sweets of human life, 
 
 Rend’ring its gall less mortal, as renews 
 Our vigour this resplendent vision rife 
 With promise, — this bright pomp that, swift subdues 
 All sense of pain, doubt, fear, which us pursues 
 In mystic seasons when high Powers exact 
 Their penalties, — high Powers unseen that use 
 Their creature Man according to some pact 
 Beyond our scope — but held eternally infract. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 To mysterize I scorn — yet own the task 
 Of labouring sages guerdon doth deserve 
 Of thanks from kings : they clothe with prudent mask 
 The image from whose worship Man might swerve 
 If nuded : they contribute to conserve 
 Homage of monarchs, awe of gods, restraint 
 Of wholesome reverence for law ; and nerve 
 The arm of Power, when it grows old and faint 
 And impious men deride its ceremonies quaint. 
 
30 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXV .. 
 
 But I disdain to mysterize : let pass 
 The fables of old bards, and thy far view 
 Truthful experience guiding, — scorning glass 
 Of types and stale conjectures, — Spartan, due 
 Observance take that novelties congrue 
 But ill with social weal : while bloom and thrive, 
 Through endless ages, lands whose tribes eschew 
 Disloyalty, — where sons meek sires survive 
 Preserving, piously, their customs primitive. 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 There knowledge grows ; hale labour fills the realm 
 With teeming plenty ; life doth, vig’rous, strike 
 Its roots into the soil ; and swarms, that whelm 
 With ruin lands more changeful where dislike 
 To rev’rend custom lifts the rebel pike 
 Or traitor dagger, — drain deep bog and swamp, — 
 
 Delve the stiff marl, — yea, on the bald cliff, like 
 The eagle nestle, — strewing- mould, with tramp 
 Industrious, on the rock : their zeal vrhat toil can damp ? 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 There arts that rise in the far mist of ages 
 Are cherished and preserved with sacred care ; 
 
 And, if aught nobler lore of later sages 
 Evolves, no sacrilegious hands uptear 
 The roots of ancient wisdom, — but, by rare 
 And tender husbandry, the late-found flower 
 Is with the old engraffed, — and, thenceforth, bear 
 Their wedded branches fruits that richer shower [dower. 
 Wide o’er the blest, peace-nurtured land their bounteous 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Proud Greek, 1 ask thee, where is now the boast 
 Of gay and changeful Hellas? [27] — Where the pride 
 Of wisdom, valour, song, — your wave-washed coast, 
 
 Ye said, would wear for aye? Doth it abide 
 Where sage Minerva’s owl still sits to chide 
 Old Echo, when some lingering column falls 
 On grey Athence’s waste, at eventide ? 
 
 Or glows it from the brows of Theban thralls 
 And Spartan cowards — a barbarian’s frown appals ? 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 31 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Graian, behold, from China’s terraced mountains, 
 Meek, peaceful myriads to the valleys wend, 
 
 And, with their brethren by the silver fountains 
 Reclining, to some hoary teacher lend 
 Enraptured audience,— while his lips commend 
 The lessons of the ever-honoured seer 
 Whose wisdom’s lustre doth as far transcend 
 The glimmering lights your westerlings revere, 
 
 As doth the orient sun outvie each smaller sphere. 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Behold the greatness of the Flowery Nation 
 Attracting wond’ring eyes from all the earth, 
 
 While countless tongues rehearse loud commendation 
 Of vast Cathay : how science had her birth, 
 
 In peaceful secret, there; and glided forth 
 From her pure cradle, like a godlike thing, 
 
 Blessing unboastfully !— pouring her worth 
 Of wisdom on the world ; but of her spring 
 Primeval to the infant isles ne’er whispering. 
 
 LXXXI I. 
 
 Behold how earth’s united sages crowd 
 To pay their homage at the shrine maternal 
 To which old Northmen wild the mute guide owed 
 That led them o’er the deeps where regions vernal 
 Breathed their rich balm, when light of stars supernal 
 Was hid — the mystic needle — to the pole 
 Leal ever, as, to Wisdom’s truths eternal, 
 
 By sage Confucius opened, ages roll 
 And still find China’s children cleaving with one soul. 
 
 Lxxxm. 
 
 Or art, held magic once, that spreads the glory 
 Of thought with speed, — by which the peasant hind, 
 Familiar as the prince, talks with bard hoary 
 Whose bones are wind-spread atoms, but whose mind 
 Still lives, converses, fulmines, splendour-shrined 
 Upon the lettered page; while pyramid 
 And column, arch and dome, taunt human kind 
 With ruin, where the founders’ names are hid, — 
 
 And dust becomes of Death a mirror pellucid. 
 
32 
 
 TfiE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Or delicatest skill, by which the worm 
 Yields up the riches of her soft cocoon 
 Where bounteous nature teacheth her to form 
 For royalty and beauty, — lustrous boon ! — 
 
 The fabric for their robes, or proud festoon 
 That decks their palaces : or various art 
 Pictorial, that — by tapestry, cartoon, 
 
 Canvass, or marble, where dead forms upstart 
 To life — sublime instruction doth to man impart. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 All the wide world inherits of the wealth 
 Of wisdom, Genius, skill, attribute now, 
 
 The truly wise unto those steps of stealth 
 With w hich the Genius of the land of Foh 
 Clomb Himaleh’s tall barriers of snow 
 To kindle light celestial on the strand 
 Of infant India, — whence, as sages shew, 
 
 The Chaldee, Mitzraim,[28] and thy later land, 
 Achaian, lit their lamps with an ungenerous hand. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 The borrowed lights are quenched : the parent fame 
 Glows with undimmed and steady lustre, still! 
 
 Babel [29] and Thebes, and Athens, have a name 
 With things that were; or claim from infantile 
 Far-islet harps and voices strains that chill 
 With sense of desolation them that waken 
 Their deathful echoes : Life and vigour fill 
 Ancestral Cambalu,[30] — whose strength unshaken 
 By China’s thousand pristine cities is partaken. 
 
 LXXXVI I. 
 
 Spartan, I challenge thee upon this theme, 
 
 Disdaining mystery. Obedience meek 
 
 To the high wearer of the diadem 
 
 Sways the vast heart of China : fathers seek 
 
 Like rev’rence from their sons ; and children speak 
 
 A filial language, through the land, unknown 
 
 To kingless libertines. The fruit unique 
 
 Of natural monarchy, through ages shewn, — 
 
 Peace, shedding gladness, on my fatherland hath grown. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 33 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 And why we thus nold thrones doth thence result, 
 
 I judge, that great maternal Nature keeps 
 Her purposes: here, witness we th’ adult 
 Expressions of Her will : on earth she heaps 
 Monitions that Man’s welfare reaps 
 Its thrift from kings : now, after-life doth prove 
 Her unity of wisdom ; — and, while sweeps 
 Duration on, in kingly souls enwove 
 Shall grow intenser consciousness of Nature’s love. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Thus spake the old Cathaian shade, and ceased ; 
 
 While sceptred spirits, in refulgent rays, 
 
 Sent fofth from their deep essence bright attest 
 Of grateful joy. Such spiritual praise 
 These render ; but a gathering gloom betrays 
 Some scorner ’mid the radiant effluence 
 Of gladdened mind. Surceased the mystic ’blaze, 
 
 And uprose Antony, with vehemence 
 Yerbing these thoughts of barbed truth and insolence : — 
 
 xc. 
 
 That regal souls shall regally possess 
 This heritage, nor presaged ruin hurl 
 These powers to nought, needs not thy wilderness 
 Of proof, dim Shade ! When penal tempests curl 
 Round us their waves we sink not in their whirl ; 
 
 But thus retrieve our thrones. Why seek we more ? 
 Let those that prophesy the prince and churl, 
 
 New equals, shall on this mysterious shore 
 Exist, shew whence derived their visionary lore. 
 
 xci. 
 
 Till then, I scorn their lunes, as now I scorn, 
 
 Cathaian fabler, what thou dost miscount 
 Of undisturbed regalities age-worn. 
 
 I tell thee, cloud-clad king, souls paramount 
 Become by Fate : Nature in her great fount 
 Moulds monarchs, who earth’s sceptres seize, and thrust 
 Old palsied cumber-thrones aside, to mount, 
 Themselves, the seat of sway ; ay, with robust 
 Hand, pile crown upon crown on their own brows august. 
 
34 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XCII. 
 
 These are her darlings, though a coarse-fed serf 
 Bring forth their clay, and ignorantly hush, 
 
 Within his mud-built shed the cradled dwarf 
 At whose full voice the bright-armed throng snail rush 
 To conquest, and whose hand, time-nerved, shall crush 
 Old pomps like rotten reeds. These nature rears 
 In native loftiness ; old monarchs blush 
 When they behold them, or wax wan with fears ; [pears. 
 For on their ominous front, deep-graved, stern change ap- 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Stern change — but needful : for, thou dost indulge 
 Earth’s partial love, Cathaian picturer, 
 
 Denying that great Nature’s laws promulge 
 The healthfulness of change. Light task it were 
 To dash thy brittle images, and blurr 
 Their tricksy tints to gangrened, livid hues; 
 
 To show how Misery finds no comforter 
 Throughout thy fatherland ; how Want subdues 
 All virtue in its monster cities’ dark purlieus ; 
 
 xciv. 
 
 To point thee to the life its millions drag, — 
 
 Its famine-stricken millions, — eager, glad, 
 
 To find a putrid dog for food, or rag 
 To hide their nakedness : gaunt man, driven mad 
 By hunger and oppression, to these sad 
 And dreary shades fleeing for refuge from 
 His hell on earth : pale woman, loath to add 
 More wretched things to Life’s slow martyrdom, 
 Strangling, remorselessly, the fruit of her own womb ! 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Light task it were, gray fabler, to lift up 
 The silken curtain thou hast, sleekly, cast 
 O’er the huge tombs of city life where droop, 
 
 In squalor, human shapes become repast 
 For vermin e’er they die : from whom, aghast, 
 
 Thy mandarins, of boasted courtesy, 
 
 Would turn and shriek, as if the black plague’s blast 
 Had blown on them. I scorn to answer thee 
 At large, — threading thy labyrinthine eulogy, — 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Or, I would utter all the horrid tale 
 Of infant murder, starving toil, accurst 
 Desire for gold, devices of the pale 
 And cunning bonze, conceit of idiots nurst 
 In ign’rance, crime and folly that will burst 
 Upon the world, and tell its own strange story, 
 
 Ere .long. To regal spirits what rehearsed 
 Thou hast — let this suffice ! — for, now, the glory, 
 
 Of thy dim land, like other dreams, grows transitory. 
 
 XCVII. 
 
 The restless pirates of the northern isles, — 
 
 Breaking your barriers of three thousand years, — 
 
 With their own eyes, your land of fabled smiles 
 Behold, and find it but a land of tears— 
 
 Like to their own. While woman’s form appears 
 Bowed with her infant on her back, in mud 
 To th’ waist, to till the rice-plant toiling, — cheers, 
 Though savagely, this thought their frozen blood— 
 That equal degradation hath, but yet subdued 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 One of their sea-girt homes — Hibernia ! — there, 
 
 Gray dynast, — if with disembodied mind, 
 
 Throughout these shades, thou dost deep descant share,— 
 Like squalid want and suffering, intertwined 
 With life of crowds that labour, thou wilt find — 
 
 And only there ! Oh, that old Rome could wake, 
 
 Once more, her victor eagles, and unbind 
 These slaves from their vile fetters, — or earth shake 
 With change until they could, themselves, their bondage 
 
 [break ! 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 Thou fabling phantasm, what hath man become, 
 
 Sunk in the stagnancies of custom old ? — 
 
 A creature who will whine to win the crumb 
 His tyrant’s dog refuses ! if the hold 
 Democraty of buried Rome, controlled, 
 
 Ev’n by earth’s masters, but with dole of bread 
 Dealt to them daily, could such slaves behold — 
 
 Such breadless slaves — o’er earth’s old region tread, 
 Their fieshless shades would frown among the doomed dead! 
 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 C. 
 
 Thou art rebuked, justly : yet, controvert 
 I not thy sentence, that with regal state 
 Dynamic essences shall be begirt 
 Through ceaseless life: 1 only deprecate 
 Thy errors : claiming for the child of Fate — 
 
 The natural heir of greatness — that award 
 
 His deeds deserve. Monarchs, we create 
 
 Anew, your strength ! Not fabling sage or bard, — 
 
 But we — Fate’s darlings — merit grateful kings’ regard ! • 
 
 ci. 
 
 Thus ended, like an actor for applause, 
 
 He who a haughty challenger began, — 
 
 Winning no meed of praise where all grew foes, 
 
 Stung by his scorn, or scorning, while, with scan 
 Of spirits, they beheld his vanity outran 
 Truth’s soberness. He sank with humbled crest — 
 Perceiving frowns sit on each ghostly van 
 Of those throned powers. Forthwith made manifest 
 His mental throes Nero’s proud spirit of unrest. 
 
 cn. 
 
 That Thrones to thy stout valour owe huge debt, — 
 
 He spake, casting around a withering smile ; — 
 is true as that thou wert an anchoret ! 
 
 Hero of Actium ! — Vestal of the Nile ! — 
 
 No time, on earth, your effigies shall spoil 
 Of lasting laurels, — wreath so fitly blending 
 With Daphne’s virtue valour without soil ! [31] 
 
 In Hades, triumphs, coy loves never ending [ing ! 
 Shall still be yours, — the future the bright past transcend- 
 
 cm. 
 
 Darling of Fate ! — to swell thy self-sung laud 
 Let spirits vie ! let grateful kings bow down 
 And homage thee, — by loud trump overawed 
 Of thy great glory, which thyself hast blown ! 
 
 Vauntful buffoon, — that thou dost fill a throne 
 In this mysterious clime, adds to the scourge 
 Of princely spirits : mockeries, this crown 
 And sceptre I pronounce, — whate’er some ur^e 
 Of ceaseless pomp, — if shapes like thine these visions forge. 
 
OF SUICIDES* 
 
 37 
 
 CIV. 
 
 What wert thou but an upstart and an ape 
 Of spirits truly regal who thy freak 
 Of kingship suffered, till maturer shape 
 Their own great plans of sovereignty could take ? 
 Fawning on Julius, who beneath thy sleek 
 Exterior saw and mocked the thriftless flame 
 For empire, — or, on young Octavius meek 
 And crafty, hurling sneers, — thy petty game 
 Subserved the master-spirits of the Roman drame. 
 
 cv. 
 
 And when thou hadst subserved their astute end 
 Thou wast laid by. Boaster, — ’tis not the fool 
 Who blabs his aims, and thinks each man a friend, 
 Whom nature marks for empire : but a tool 
 She shaped him; and, to spirits born for rule 
 He hath his use, — to Fate’s true darlings, skilled 
 To hide their reach with feigned indifPrenco cool, 
 
 Or virtuous humbleness, and ever filled. 
 
 With wary watch of all by whose lent thews they build. 
 
 cvi. 
 
 Our Roman greatness by such masonry 
 Of mind was raised, until the Julian boy 
 Laid on the top-stone with felicity 
 Of skill : ever of power appearing coy, 
 
 Continuing antique symbols to employ, — 
 
 Titles and forms of the old commonwealth, — 
 Hallowing the shade securely to destroy 
 The substance of licentiousness : wise stealth, 
 
 By which the pulse of sovereignty gained vigorous health. 
 
 CVII. 
 
 With * bread and theatres’ the vulgar gasp [32] 
 
 Was wisely fed, when Wisdom thus had won 
 The earth’s rich rule : to our illustrious grasp 
 The reins of empire were bequeathed, — our own 
 By right of power, craft, favour: handed down 
 Entire by us, — the pusillanimous brood 
 Of later days reared a divided throne. 
 
 And lost the heritage whose amplitude 
 Comprised the general world’s wealth, wisdom, hardihood. 
 
38 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CVIII. 
 
 Not more I mock when cloud-wrapt shadows doat f 
 And fondly prate of barbarous unknown shores, 
 Than I despise ye, — sceptrelings distraught 
 With pride, — souls of empireless emperors, — 
 
 That round me sit ! How rich a dower was yours ! 
 By how much toil of sinew and of mind 
 Collected, conglobated, were Earth’s stores 
 Treasured in Rome, — the Eternal ! — throne assigned 
 By Nature and the Gods for sway of human kind! 
 
 cix. 
 
 Never shall men, again, view aught august 
 And glorious as Rome — that mighty heart 
 O’ th’ world whose pulses fed with life robust 
 By million health-fraught veins, mingling athwart 
 Her giant trunk, did duly re-impart 
 Vigour and strength to every distant limb ! 
 
 How gazeth, even now, the Afric swart, 
 
 Fierce frozen Kelt, Teuton, or Tartar grim, 
 Untombing some huge vertebra or relic dim 
 
 cx. 
 
 Of Rome’s vast skeleton, — a monstrous bulk 
 O’er isles and continents that lies, supine, — 
 Wondering what giant soul the mighty hulk 
 Served, in far unknown age, for earthen shrine ! 
 Dwarfed, dastard heirs to Caesar’s lofty line, — 
 
 If courage to defend what they bequeathed, — 
 
 I f soul to comprehend their grand design, — 
 
 They could on your weak essences have breathed, — 
 Rome’s life with glory had been perdurably wreathed ! 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Inferior natures, — your effeminate gripe 
 Of the world’s sceptre was dissolved like dew 
 Upon the grass what time the sun doth wipe 
 Up evening’s lingering tears : so feeble grew 
 Your grasp of power the Roman w T orld scarce knew 
 Ye had a throne, at last,— for ye had ceased 
 To be its masters long before it threw 
 Your filmy fetters off to don the vest 
 Of vassalage unto the smooth, tiara’d priest. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 39 
 
 CXII. 
 
 Ye despicable things, that sit and swell 
 Yourselves in empty pomp — ye that betrayed 
 Rome’s glory to the Goth — 
 
 Vile spirit, quell 
 
 The tempest of thy madness ! — spake the shade 
 Of fierce Maximian : — Who dost thou upbraid. 
 
 Coward, with tim’rousness P — monster, with vice 
 And idle dissoluteness ? — Of all who swayed 
 Earth’s sceptres, thou unworthiest shar’st this bliss, 
 These shadowed thrones in spiritual necropolis! 
 
 cxm. 
 
 Slanderer, — remember that Maximian strove 
 To prop the falling state, — nor age his hands 
 Unsinewed for the sword ; but round him wove 
 Their fatal net domestic traitor bands. 
 
 That one, stern Truth with foulest vices brands, 
 
 Doth play the chidester, here, — one, who should hide 
 His head in shame, uncensured reprimands 
 Thrones who excel in virtue, — doth betide, 
 
 I fear, our essence still to weakness misallied. 
 
 cxiv. 
 
 Thrones of the West, — why sit ye tamely, thus, 
 
 Bearing reproach from a vile miscreant 
 Whose name doth blot Rome’s annals ? — 
 
 Nebulous 
 
 With thought grew, now, the spirits arrogant 
 On neighb’ring thrones, seeming with wrath to pant 
 And throb, as throbs the thunder cloud : their rage 
 Soon burst in tumult : Nero, scornful taunt 
 Renewed ; and Rome’s whole self-slain lineage 
 Seemed on each other clam’rous, ireful war to wage. — 
 
 cxv. 
 
 As, when upon a seat of gamesome hares, 
 
 Or brood of quarrellous birds, the soaring kite 
 Stoops suddenly, victor with vanquished shares 
 Silent and swift retreat, — so shrunk with fright 
 To ignominious dumbness each fierce sprite 
 Of haughty Rome when rose the Pontic king, 
 
 Hurling a frown of intellectual might 
 Among their cowering sceptres. Thus,tobring [ling:[33] 
 Thought to Power’s rescue, strove the strong-souled Ester- 
 
40 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 I marvel not, — illustrious Spartan ghost, — 
 
 That thou, with truest sapience, dost leave 
 
 Rome’s mimic gladiators to be tossed 
 
 With rage of earth’s old pride, which still doth cleave 
 
 To these thin vehicles, and, perhaps, will grieve 
 
 And vex our fleshless essences for aye : 
 
 I marvel not, that, scorning to achieve 
 A worthless conquest, to commutual fray 
 Thou leav’st thy foes : — let Folly, kindred Folly, slay ! 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 Let Rome’s throned pigmies argue, answerless ! 
 
 A brood on whom I grudgingly bestow 
 A frown, recalling Sylla’s dreadlessness, 
 
 Gorgeous Lucullus, and the godlike brow 
 Of Pompey, — minds that, each, to have for foe, 
 Ennobled strife more than the glittering stake 
 Of Asia’s sceptres, and magnific show 
 Of twenty realms in arms — of whom none spake 
 A tongue their chief unknew nor burned his yoke to break 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 But, while ignoble combat of the soul 
 Thou nobly scorn’st, — I marvel, Graian wise, 
 
 That, here, in Hades, thou dost seek control 
 O’er mightier essences, by worn-out guise 
 Of mystery. Not to antagonize 
 Thy spirit I seek, — but challenge pertinent 
 And weighty cause for startling prophecies 
 Of dissolution. How to tbee hath lent 
 Unerring Nature, Her divine premonishment P 
 
 cxix. 
 
 Since, in this after-life, no more by dull 
 
 Deceptive sense, from sound, sight, touch, doth earn 
 
 The labouring soul her knowledge ; and though full, 
 
 Of images our being, since all intern 
 
 They germ, and, from our working thought yborn, 
 
 Take spiritual embodiment ; since live . 
 
 These shapes by plastic throes with which we yearn 
 Essentially, and Essence can derive 
 No unknown truth from the mere representative 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 41 
 
 cxx. 
 
 Of its own ever-active energy ; 
 
 Since all we view, or seem to view, in space 
 Irradiate, thus, with emblemed royalty, 
 
 Js reflex of ourselves, and we erase 
 
 These splendours when, by Nature’s law, to trace 
 
 Again our steps o’er penal wilds we range, — 
 
 Or seem to range, — and with refulgent grace 
 Resume these thrones, in season due,* since change 
 Of bliss, or woe, — by law inexplicably strange, — 
 
 cxxi. 
 
 Results from our own intellectual force; — 
 
 [What warrants thee predicting force shall whelm 
 Our regal state with ruin, in the course 
 Of spiritual duration, and disrealrn 
 Hades of kings, humble the trophied helm 
 Of all her myriad heroes, and exalt 
 The serfs of her mysterious penal realm 
 To equal state, never to know default 
 Or end, beneath the glory of this gem-prankt vault ? 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 What canst thou know, — though intellection deep 
 Be thine, — that we know not ? Thou shar’st our pain, 
 When pain returns, if o’er thy essence sweep 
 Like woes with ours, how doth to thee pertain 
 Superior potency ? Lacon, explain 
 Thy bold vaticinations, — or, henceforth, 
 
 Expect from kingly spirits haught disdain 
 And dumb contempt, or tempest of their mirth, [birth ! 
 When to more dark-wombed wonders thou giv’st dreaming 
 
 CXXIII. 
 
 So spake the soul of Mithridates, while 
 
 Awe or approving silence held the Thrones 
 
 Who in that mystic clime of self-exile 
 
 Kept disembodied pomp of glistering crowns 
 
 And lustrous sceptres. Veiled with gloom of frowns, 
 
 Or lit with eagerness,' each visage seemed, 
 
 Now, on the Spartan fixt. Soft spirit tones 
 Of suasiveness, soon, from his essence streamed ; 
 
 And thus, of past and future life, he calmly themed : 
 
42 
 
 TIIE PURGATORY 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 Spirits of Men, with reverence whom I hail 
 And with fraternal love — albeit I deem 
 These sculptured blazonries a vision frail, — 
 
 Or, like their antitypes on earth, a dream, — 
 
 For that your high Humanity supreme, 
 
 I judge, o’er names and empty pomps ; — forbear 
 To count me fabling fantast, — and beteem [35] 
 Me, shunning mortal passion, to declare 
 My thought, by spiritual tongue auxiliar. 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 Contest I court not, — nor to wrathful strife 
 Seek to impel ye by defiance brave : 
 
 Brothers, 1 wot, that earth’s poor troublous life 
 Had storms enow : rude storms that hither drave 
 More than a moiety of ye that rave 
 Upon these thrones, contending as if wrath 
 Were reason. Sages say, on earth, the grave 
 Ends passion’s turmoil, and the spirit hath, 
 
 At death, ’mid shapes all passionless, its gentle path. 
 
 cxxvi. 
 
 How little truth they knew ! — how much affirmed 
 From love, hope, fear ! How little know we still ! 
 
 How oft, when pleasing shapes from thought have germed 
 Within us, have we strengthened them with will 
 That they should live; until they seemed to fill 
 Our utmost life ! — Yet, were they things of nought: 
 Soul-mists from essence streaming, volatile, 
 
 In Hades, — as, on earth, ethereal, float, 
 
 From perfume and putresence, vapours picture-fraught. 
 
 CXXVII. 
 
 Perchance thou judgest well, — sage Pontic shade, — 
 Attributing this typic statue-crowd, 
 
 And this enthroned and diademmed parade, 
 
 To demiurgic power with which doth brood 
 
 The soul on space, verisimilitude 
 
 Of what it loves and wishes swift creating : — 
 
 Yet, if these shapes with substance unendowed [dating, 
 Thou decm’st, — their life, like ours, from change still 
 I argue, from past change, more change our state awaiting. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 4o 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 I seek no vulnerable thought to pounce 
 Upon — thy metaphysic argument 
 To frustrate; nor will, rashly, aught pronounce 
 Of this strange after-life, ’Twere insolent 
 To dogmatize where being still is blent 
 With mystery. When, therefore, I opine 
 Thou err’st, my spirit tells with diffident 
 Emotion that to other close than thine 
 Her slow deductions lead — pond’ring on this design : 
 
 CXXIX. 
 
 Pledge of their perpetuity, or proof 
 That kings derive from Nature, — in these shapes, 
 Monstrous and fear-fraught, that to prop this roof 
 Preposterously essay, — if, any, dim, escapes 
 My dull perception. Wondrous were collapse 
 Of heaven’s own bow! — more wondrous if its fail 
 Could crush an insect ! Falsely thus bedrapes 
 Nature’s fair face with fancies that appal, 
 
 He who mankind would for his selfish ends enthral. 
 
 cxxx. 
 
 The Power that forms, supports, and governs Man, 
 Smiles on him evermore ; benignly woke 
 His infancy with love ; unfolds Its plan 
 Of happiness in the fair-written book 
 Of Man’s own nature, and the forms that look 
 Upon his essence from the outward world ; 
 
 Implants no instinct in his breast to mock 
 His life; but hath his sentient clay impearled 
 With reason — sovereign gem in fragile folds enfurled. 
 
 cxxxr. 
 
 A thing of beauty, though but frail, in joy 
 Perpetual might his mortal life be passed ; 
 
 But fablers do his peace and bliss destroy 
 With falsest fears : each hour is overcast 
 With gloom : at death he shrinks ; yea, grows aghast 
 At thought of the dread future, which, to shun, 
 
 He must propitiate mystic demons vast, 
 
 By rites that serve to load with pious boon 
 The smooth and crafty priest who consecrates the throne. 
 
4 4 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 cxxxir. 
 
 Ye frown, — shadows of monarchs, — and deport 
 Yourselves full fiercely : yet, with mental eye 
 This vision scan, — and, that its forms consort 
 With truths I have proclaimed, and typify 
 Force joined with Fraud, ye, also, will descry. 
 
 Do not your spirits bear me witness strong 
 That they the real monsters are who try 
 To fill man with belief that they prolong 
 His respite from some monstrous vengeance o’er him hung P 
 
 CXXXIII. 
 
 Whether I read these images aright 
 Or err, for high Humanity I claim 
 Precedence of all pomps. Spirits, if might 
 Or wisdom are inherent in the name 
 Monarchal, — if the sceptre doth enflame 
 The soul of him who sways it with the thirst 
 For virtue, — if Time doth not count with shame 
 Its regal dolts and cowards, nor is curst 
 With vice of monster kings, — I have their names aspersed. 
 
 cxxxiv. 
 
 Let your own argument, — your sage debate, — 
 
 Confute me, when, in sorrowing ire, I say — 
 
 Your race, in every clime, doth merit hate 
 
 And vengeance from mankind — the trembling prey 
 
 Ye ever tortured ere ye deigned to slay ! 
 
 But I renew not strife : spirits, I glow 
 With nobler aim — aside to see ye lay 
 These vanities, scorning the gaudy show 
 That emblems freedom’s, virtue’s, wisdom’s direst foe: 
 
 cxxxv. 
 
 For such is kingship propp’d by altar-craft : 
 
 But I renew not strife : spirits, I stand 
 Self-sentenced, self-condemned, since to engraft, 
 Mystery with Truth, in my loved fatherland, 
 
 I sought, — judging mankind might be trepanned 
 To reverence Freedom when her virgin face, 
 
 Enmasked with sanctity, looked grave and grand : 
 Unskilled to know that her own native grace, 
 
 Alone, could charm men, lastingly, to her embrace. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 45 
 
 CXXXVI. 
 
 Ye clepe me Prophet! I accept the jest 
 For earnest; and, with mystic wreath thus crowned 
 By your united voice, Mystery attest 
 To be the tyrant Power from whose profound 
 Soul-bondage Man is breaking: whispering sound 
 Of Truth’s young breath greets Europe’s grateful ear; 
 And Freedom, in some hearts, a throne hath found 
 On that new shore where still, alas ! appear 
 Earth’s olden stains : the helot’s stripes— the helot’s tear ! 
 
 CXXXVII. 
 
 Afric’s dark tribes, and Asia’s populous swarms, 
 
 The voice of Truth, and Freedom’s holy call 
 Shall know, ere long — upstarting, — not to arms, 
 
 For blood and slaughter ; but to disenthral 
 Their new-born spirits from funereal 
 And priest-forged fears ; to shake their ancient slough 
 Of sottish ignorance off ; no more to crawl 
 In abjectness ’fore hideous gods ; nor throw 
 Their slavish frames ’fore kings, in vile prostration low. 
 
 cxxxvur. 
 
 Spirits, to tell of wondrous sympathy 
 Subsisting still, — despite our severance 
 From earth, — between flesh-clothed humanity 
 And unclothed Mind, were futile occupance 
 Of torture’s lapse, — which now doth swift advance, 
 
 As ye perceive, once more, unto its bourne. 
 
 Albeit uncomprehended, consonance 
 Of Mind’s progression in this strange sojourn 
 Subsists, ye know, with minds of men on earth that mourn. 
 
 cxxxix. 
 
 That Essences shall glad deliverance reach, 
 
 In penal clime of suicide, our hope, 
 
 Unquenchable by torment, seems to teach ; 
 
 And spirits who in Hades never droop 
 
 With Earth’s old doubts, gathered in eloquent groupe, 
 
 Deep descant hold of glorious state to come 
 
 For men and spirits, — mystic horoscope 
 
 Interpreting — that, either side the tomb, 
 
 Men’s weary souls, in unison, shall reach blest doom. 
 
THE PURGATORY 
 
 1 6 
 
 CXL. 
 
 And Minds presaging- this deliverance blest 
 For fleshless Essences, joy for Earth’s teen, 
 
 Truth for its error, from its slave-toil rest, — 
 
 Foreshew that love fraternal shall with sheen 
 Genial and mild dissolve the marble mien 
 Of selfishness to soft beneficence ; 
 
 Until, as yearned the godlike Nazarene, 
 
 It yearns o’er pain and woe, with affluence 
 Of healing help and soul- restoring condolence. 
 
 CXLl. 
 
 Nor less presage they that the trodden crov/d, 
 
 Long left to grovel in degrading mire 
 Of bruted life, and sunk in desuetude 
 Of reason’s energy, her living fire 
 Shall feel anew, and nobly thence aspire 
 To feed the mind with knowledge till its thews 
 Acquiring might, they reassert their higher 
 Gradation spiritual. Such hope diffuse 
 Far-reaching spirits, — hope that ev’n despair subdues. 
 
 CXLJI. 
 
 Thrones, — ye perceive your splendours ’gin to pale; 
 And soon we must our penal throes renew. 
 
 I cease my theme ; and may have erred, — for frail 
 Is still our wisdom : it may be, the Few 
 Shall still the Many trample and subdue : 
 
 That Truth and Liberty shall bloom — to die, 
 
 Like glorious winged things, that, swift, pursue 
 The sunbeam-atoms for a day, then hie 
 To death: blending, as ’twere, a breath — a smile — a sigh 
 
 CXLriT. 
 
 It may be that the numan soul is mixt 
 With nature of decadence and frail change, 
 
 Essentially : that never stably fixt, 
 
 But mutable, eternally to range 
 
 From ignorance to wisdom, — then, by strange 
 
 Return to ignorance, — may be its fate, 
 
 Inevitably: that when their brief revenge 
 Slaves take on tyrants, they emanci >r te 
 Tuemselves in vain, and Nature doth their s rife frustrate 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 47 
 
 CXLIV. 
 
 Spirits, it may be emptier than a dream 
 That fair Equality shall one day hold 
 Sole sceptre on the earth : that Man shall deem 
 His brother man too sacred to be sold 
 Or slain, — to be by any power controlled, 
 
 Save the soft force of love and wisdom : field 
 It is for thought : thy dogma, — monarch old, — 
 
 4 There must be conqu’ring lords and slaves that yield’ — 
 The Future may attest as the stained Past hath sealed. 
 
 CXLV. . 
 
 These splendours pale! Spirits, with me combine 
 Your sentence — that to this deep argument 
 Large aidant minds who tenant this confine 
 Be summoned, when our penance-term is spent, 
 
 And o’er us this gemmed roof, once more, is bent. 
 
 New lights on truth may issue from their rays 
 Of cogitation ; and some joint consent 
 Accrue to spirits from the confluent blaze 
 Of Essences, when each his glowing thought displays. — 
 
 CXLV i. 
 
 Lycurgus ceased : the column’d monster shapes 
 Wox dim to faintness; and a hue of dread 
 Fell on each spirit, knowing torture’s lapse 
 Was ended. Ere their sceptred glory fled, 
 
 Methought, a dying beam of radiance shed 
 From each fast-fading visage did betoken 
 Mute acquiescence in their judgment bred 
 With fair proposal by the Spartan spoken— — 
 
 And, as that dying beam was shed — my dream was broken. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 [1] Stanza 3. — “ Rollo’s robber-brood” was intended as a 
 compliment to the English nobility, so many of whom claim 
 to be descended, in common with William the Bastard, their 
 brigand chief, from the soldiers of Rollo the Norman. Mr. 
 Disraeli, however, seems to be of opinion that these preten- 
 sions to chivalrous descent deserve no credit ; and, surely, 
 he is an authority on such a subject. 
 
 “ I have always understood,” said Coningsby, " that our 
 peerage was the finest in Europe.” 
 
 " From themselves,” said Millbank, w and the heralds they 
 pay to paint their carriages. But I go to facts. When 
 Henry the Seventh called his first Parliament, there were 
 only twenty-nine temporal peers to be found, and even some 
 of them took their seats illegally, for they had been attainted. 
 Of those twenty-nine not five remain, and they, as the 
 Howards for instance, are not Norman nobility. We owe 
 the English peerage to three sources : the spoliation of the 
 Church ; the open and flagitious sale of its honours by the 
 elder Stuarts ; and the boroughmongering of our own times.’ ’ 
 — Coningsby : vol. ii., chap. 4. 
 
 [2] Stanza 42. — "Scythians with heel in front,” and 
 " Ethiops dark and headless.” — The Abarimonides, and 
 Blemmyae, will be recognized by readers acquainted with 
 Pliny’s portraits of human monsters. 
 
 [3] Stanza 43. — “ That breathing stone, &c.” — The author, 
 it need scarcely be said, has never seen the Laocoon ; but 
 does not the imagination, on the mere receipt of testimony, 
 often conceive a more passionate worship of that which is 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 49 
 
 believed to be surpassingly beautiful or perfect as an effort 
 of human skill, than the judgment yields when directed by 
 actual observation ? 
 
 [4] Stanza 44. — “ Sculptured temple in Hindoo cave.” — 
 See Captain Seely’s enthusiastic description of “ Keylas the 
 Proud,” among the caverned temples of Elora. 
 
 [5] Stanza 44 . — “ Or where wild audience the Arab gives, 
 &c.” — These and the remaining lines of the stanza form 
 almost a literal embodiment of a picture that I remember to 
 have met with in some volume of Eastern Travels, but I can- 
 not tell where it is to be found. I have searched for the pas- 
 sage in Belzoni, Richardson, Rae Wilson, &c. &c., in the 
 British Museum library, since liberation, but cannot find it. 
 
 [6] Stanza 50. — Chow-Sin, Emperor of China, B.C. 1122. 
 — His suicide is related to have resembled that of Sarda- 
 napalus, whose story Lord Byron’s splendid tragedy has ren- 
 dered familiar to the most unclassic reader. 
 
 [7] Stanza 50 . — “ Cambes.” — Xantlius, in Ccelius, tells the 
 wildly horrid story of this ancient royal gourmand, or Ogre- 
 king of the Lydians. After supper, one night, he ate up 
 his wife, as she lay by his side, and committed suicide next 
 morning, when he woke and found one of her hands in his 
 mouth ! 
 
 [8J Stanza 51. — Of the three suicides named in this stanza 
 the story of CEdipus “ who solved the Sphinx’s riddle,” will 
 be familiar. “ Sad Nauplius, the sire of Palamedes’’ one of 
 the heroes of the Trojan war, put to death by the Greeks 
 through the plots of “guileful Ithacus’’ (Ulysses) — committed 
 suicide by jumping into the sea when he failed to revenge 
 himself on his son’s betrayer. JEgeus gave his name to 
 the iEgean Sea, or Archipelago, by leaping into it from a 
 tower where he watched for the return of his son Theseus, 
 who had gone to slay the Minotaur. Theseus forgot to hoist 
 the white flag as a signal on his return, so that when his 
 ship came in sight his father supposed him dead. 
 
 4 E 
 
50 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK TIIE FIRST. 
 
 [9j Stanza 52. — Zimri. — Ilis story is narrated in the 16th 
 chap, of the 1st Kings. 
 
 [10J Stanza 53. — Ajax Telamon, so called to distinguish 
 him from Ajax O'ileus, another of Homer’s heroes, killed 
 himself with the sword given him by Hector, because “ when 
 stern Pelides (Achilles) fell” the counsel of Grecian chiefs 
 adjudged the fallen hero’s armour to Ulysses for his wisdom, 
 rather than to himself (Ajax) for his acknowledged valour. 
 — Codrus, the last king of Athens provoked the Lacedemonians 
 to kill him in battle, in order to fulfil the oracle which 
 promised victory to his subjects if their king were slain. 
 
 [11] Stanza 54. — The story of Lycurgus who bound the 
 Spartans, by oath, to observe his laws till his return from 
 Delphi, and committed suicide there, to bind the Spartans 
 to their oath for ever, is well known.— Charondas was that 
 truthful lawgiver of ancient Sicily who having established a 
 law that none should come into the public assembly armed, 
 and afterwards entering it with his sword unwittingly, slew 
 himself immediately when reminded that he had broken 
 his own law. 
 
 [12] Stanza 55. — Mr. Sheridan Knowles’ fine tragedy of 
 “Virginius” must have made merely English readers ac- 
 quainted with the character of Appius Claudius, the tyranni- 
 cal Roman Decemvir. 
 
 [13] Stanza 56. — It may be necessary, for some readers, 
 to say that Nero is the suicide indicated in the latter part 
 of this stanza. 
 
 [14] Stanza 57. — Maximian’s suicide will be found in Gib- 
 bon. Bonosus was also one of the “ imperial” rulers of the 
 divided Roman world, during its decay 
 
 [15] Stanza 58.— I have not named Maxentius, and other 
 imperial suicides, also found during the period of “ The De- 
 cline and Fall.” 
 
 [16] Stanza 58. — Mithridates, king of Pontus, who for six 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 51 
 
 and twenty years kept the Romans in. alarm, and baffled, 
 several of their greatest generals, was, according to C cei o 
 in his oration for Manilius, the greatest monarch that ever 
 sat on a throne. Twelve days were appointed for public 
 thanksgiving to the immortal gods, when the news of his 
 death arrived at Rome. He first attempted suicide by poison, 
 but it would not take effect upon him : the antidotes he had 
 taken against poison, we are told, had so fortified his con- 
 stitution that, although seventy-two years old, nothing but 
 the outward violence of the sword would end him. All the 
 Roman historians combine to represent him as more terrible 
 than even Hannibal to the senate, people, and armies. 
 
 [17] Stanza 59. — Juba’s suicide with that of his friend 
 Petreius is described in the 94th chapter of Ccesar’s (or Hir- 
 tius’s) book “JDe Bello Africano.” Like Cato "of Utica,” 
 Juba slew himself rather than submit to Caesar. 
 
 [18] Stanza 60. — The mythological hero, Meleager, who 
 slew the famous Calydonian boar, offended his mother Al- 
 thaea by killing her two brothers who had quarrelled with 
 him for giving away the head and skin of the boar to Ata- 
 lanta, the heroine who first wounded the animal. Altlioea 
 had kept, from his birth, a billet of wood, which she had 
 snatched from the fire when the Fates declared that her son’s 
 life depended on it. On learning that Meleager had slain 
 her brothers she threw the billet into the fire, and the hero 
 died as soon as it was consumed : “ As did the fatal brand 
 Althcea burned.” (Shakspere’s Henry VI. Part 1. Act 1. 
 Scene 1.) Althcea afterwards slew herself through regret. 
 — Homer and others contain parts of the story ; but the 
 fullest account may be gathered by an English reader in 
 a y translation of the 8th book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. 
 
 [19] Stanza 61. — Dido’s suicide was really committed to 
 avert a marriage with the king of Mauritania, nearly 300 
 years after the voyage of ./Eneas could have occurred. I 
 have followed Virgil’s poetical romance, and described her 
 
 e 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY CNF ILLINOIS 
 
52 NOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST. 
 
 as throwing herself into the sea for loss of iEneas “ her 
 wandering Teucrian (Trojan) guest,” 
 
 [20] Stanza 62. — “ Teen,” a beautiful Spenserean word for 
 sorrow , which the scarcity of rhyme tempted me to use, 
 much, it seems, to the distaste of some tasteful critics. 
 Sisygambis, the mother of Darius, from the tender treatment 
 she received from Alexander, was so afflicted at the news of 
 his death that she killed herself, though she had borne for- 
 mer misfortunes calmly. 
 
 [21] Stanza 62. — It can scarcely be necessary to say that 
 Antony and Cleopatra are the suicides indicated in this 
 stanza. 
 
 [22] Stanza 63. — The story of Boadicea, the old British 
 queen who, with her daughters, committed suicide, rather 
 than submit to the Romans, must be familiar. 
 
 [23] Stanza 64. — I have used the word “ Chaldee” to 
 describe Sardanapalus. The Assyrians are called Casdim 
 (Chaldees) in the Hebrew bible. 
 
 [24] Stanza 6S. — “ Danaian,” “Achaian,” “ Graian,” I 
 have used for “ Greek,” after Homer. 
 
 [25] Stanza 71. — “ Lacon,” inhabitant of Laconia, that dis- 
 trict of Greece in which lay Sparta or Lacedcemon. 
 
 [26] Stanza 72. — “Cathay,” the old name, among Eu- 
 ropeans, for China. 
 
 [27] Stanza 79. — “ Hellas,” the name by which the Greeks 
 themselves called Greece . 
 
 [28] Stanza 85.—“ Mitzraim,” (sons of Mitzr) the name 
 for Egypt in the Hebrew bible. 
 
 [29] Stanza 86.—“ Babel,” in the Hebrew bible is the 
 Babylon of our translation, from the Sepluagint. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIRST. 53 
 
 [30] Stanza 86. — “Cambalu,” the name for Pekin, with 
 early European travellers. 
 
 [31] Stanza 102.— The laurel, into which Daphne the nymph 
 who fled from the embraces of Apollo was turned, may be 
 considered an emblem of coyness, as well as of valour. 
 
 [32] Stanza 107. — The “ learned’’ reader knows all about 
 Juvenal’s “ panem et circenses,” of course : others, it may be 
 necessary to inform, that the Satirist affirms a Roman mob 
 could be managed by “ bread and theatres.” Only, let it be 
 observed that the bread had to be given to the Roman mob 
 in order to keep them quiet. The way of managing starving 
 men by building “Bastiles” for them had not been dis- 
 covered then . 
 
 [33] Stanza 115. — “ Esterling,” one of our fine old words 
 signifying a dweller in the East. 
 
 [34] Stanza 117. — Mithridates is related to have ruled over 
 twenty-four nations, and to have been able to converse in 
 all their languages. His skill in medicine and other sciences 
 was also great. “ Mithridate” is an antidote for poison, said 
 to derive its name from him. 
 
 [35] Stanza 124. — “Beteem,” permit or suffer , (Hamlet, 
 Act 1. Scene 2.) I am ashamed (for my critics) to have to 
 swell these notes with such interpretations. Some of the 
 deeply-read writers in our periodicals are so profoundly ac- 
 quainted with Shakspere and Milton that they wonder where 
 I found such words as “beteem,” “perdurably,” “frore,” &c,! 
 

THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 Lyre of my fatherland ! anew, to wake 
 Thy solemn shell, I come, with trembling hand, 
 Feeling my rudeness doth harsh discord make 
 With strings great minstrels all divinely spanned. 
 How shall a thrall essay to join your band, 
 
 Ye freeborn spirits whose bold music fired 
 My freeborn sires to draw the glittering brand 
 For home and England, or, in arms attired, 
 
 To awe their lion kings who to sole power aspired ? 
 
 How shall a thrall, from humble labour sprung, 
 Successful, strike the lyre in scornful age, 
 
 When full-voiced bards have each neglected sung, 
 When loftiest rhyme is deemed a worthless page, 
 And Taste doth browse on bestial pasturage ? 
 
 Gray Prudence saith the world will disregard 
 My harping rude, or term it sacrilege 
 That captive leveller hath rashly dared 
 To touch the sacred function of the tuneful bard. 
 
 in. 
 
 Ah ! when hath joined the servile world to say 
 Truth’s song was fitly-chosen, fitly-timed ? 
 
 The bard fit songster for a lofty lay, 
 
 Or, that he worthily for bays had climbed ? 
 
 Great spirits ! who, from mortal clay sublimed, 
 Securely wear your immortality, — 
 
 By impulse incontrollable ye hymned 
 Soul-worship of the Beautiful, — the Free, 
 
 By freeborn strains, aroused to spurn at Tyranny! 
 
56 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Thou wert no beggar for permissive grace, 
 
 Illustrious sire, so blythely debonair, 
 
 Who did’st from Monkery’s mis-shapen face 
 The mask of purity, indignant tear, 
 
 And its deep-grained licentiousness lay bare, 
 
 What time our simple fathers thou didst sing 
 On merry journey bent to patter prayer [king — 
 
 At Martyr-shrine, where bowed the priest-scourged 
 That saint with tameless English heart low homaging ! [1 
 
 v. 
 
 And if thou souglit’st thou didst no favour gain 
 Worthy to be esteemed a guerdon meet 
 For one who did in such instructive strain 
 As thine, great chief of Allegory ! greet 
 A queenly ear, with rhyme of knightly feat 
 \nd dark enchantment, — weaving moral pure 
 J > o deftly with harmonious numbers sweet 
 That, while thou didst the outward sense allure, [2] 
 Thou fedd’st the mind and heart with Virtue’s nouriture. 
 
 Vi* 
 
 0 matchless Archimage of nature, whom 
 
 1 name with awe, — when thou aloft didst hold 
 Thy living * mirror’ to strike mortals dumb 
 With vision of its wonders manifold, 
 
 To render uglier still the ugly mould 
 Of baneful vice, and gibbet to mankind 
 Their general villainy, — didst thou, for gold, 
 
 Or great ones’ smiles, forbear to tell thy Mind, 
 
 Or shape thy glass like one to their foul vices blind ? 
 
 VII. 
 
 Or thou, immortal Childe, with him that saw 
 Islam’s Revolt, in rapt prophetic trance, — 
 
 Did fear of harsh reception overawe 
 Your fervid souls from fervid utterance 
 Of Freedom’s fearless shout ? — your scathing glance 
 On priestly rottenness, did ye tame down 
 Till priests could brook that lightning’s mitigance ? 
 Knowing your cold award would be the frown [known. 
 Of Power and Priestcraft, — ye your sternest thoughts made 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 57 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And what if all were helot-thoughted things 
 Old Hellene bards to meet by sacred fount 
 Would scorn, save thee, to whom my spirit clings 
 With worship true, — it were enough to count 
 Thy life of toil example paramount 
 To coward precept. ‘Evil days,’ were thine, 
 
 And ‘evil tongues , and ‘dangers,’ — yet confront 
 The storm thou didst with courage all divine, 
 
 And reared thy stately fabric ’spite of cloud malign! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Bard of the mighty harp, whose golden chords, 
 Strung by th’ Eternal, no befitting theme 
 Found among mortals and their low records, 
 
 But pealed high anthems to the throne supreme, 
 
 Or, thundering, echoed where the lurid gleam 
 
 Of Erebus revealed the primal fall ! 
 
 Since thou o’er ‘darkness’ lone triumph’d, I’ll deem 
 This grated cell no dungeon of a thrall, 
 
 But banquet-chamber where the Mind holds festival ! 
 
 Great minstrel, let the night entomb the day, 
 
 Let bolts and bars, in mockery, last till doom, 
 
 So that heaven-rcbed, thou walk’st with me, thy lay 
 Shall dissipate all thought of prison-gloom. 
 Transcendant spirit, — in this narrow room 
 Oft tenanted by woe-worn, bruted child 
 Of man, crushed from his cradle to the tomb 
 By tyrants, — how hast thou my nights beguiled ! — 
 
 1 Smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled’ ![3] 
 
 XI. 
 
 I joy that my young heart a covenant made 
 To take thee for its guide in patriot deed, 
 
 If Life’s eventful roll should shew arrayed 
 The brethren of my fatherland agreed 
 To claim their ancient birthright, and be freed. 
 
 O how the lesson of thy deathless toil, 
 
 While my soul homaged thee, in me did feed 
 The flame of freedom ! Shall the sacred oil 
 Not keep it quenchless till the grave its foemen foil P 
 
58 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Be thou enthroned, bright patriot, tuneful seer, 
 
 Not on a regal seat that thou wouldst scorn 
 
 As loftily as e’er thou scornedst here 
 
 The thrones of kings, or baubles by them worn ; 
 
 But, be thy name on England’s bosom borne 
 In pride, while all her sons thy lineage boast ! — 
 
 Thy awful brow is shaded ! Dost thou mourn 
 And bode thy darling Commonweal is lost ? — • 
 
 Nay ! — but we’ll win her back, by Labour’s gathered host ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 She shall return, with face more heavenly fair, 
 
 And graced with limbs of fitlier symmetry! 
 
 Aye, — shall return ! — for we thy kindred are : 
 
 We’ll win thy ‘mountain nymph, sweet Liberty’ ! 
 Thou, and the glorious phalanx of the free, — 
 Hampden, and Pym, and Elliott, Selden, Yane, 
 Marvell, and martyred Sydney, — what were ye ? 
 
 Our elder brethren ! — and the kingly chain [gain ! 
 Ye loosed — we’ll break: our kingless birthright we’ll re- 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Honour — all honour to thee, patriot bard ! — 
 
 With whom I took sweet counsel in my youth : 
 
 I joy, that though my lowly lot was hard, 
 
 My spirit, raised by thine, forgot its ruth, 
 
 And, smiling, dared the dint of Want’s fell tooth : 
 
 I joy, that all enamoured of thy song, 
 
 While simpletons esteemed my ways uncouth, 
 
 I wandered, by day’s dawn, the woods among, 
 
 Or did, with midnight lamp, my grateful task prolong. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Poet of Paradise, whose glory’ illumed 
 My path of youthful penury, till grew 
 The desert to a garden, and Life bloomed 
 With hope and joy, ’midst suffering, — ‘honour due’ 
 
 I cannot render thee; but reverence true 
 This heart shall give thee, till it reach the verge 
 Where human splendours lose their lustrous hue ; 
 
 And, when, in death, my mortal joys all merge — 
 
 Thy grand and gorgeous music, Milton, be my dirge ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 59 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Long had the night o’erveiled the summer sky, 
 
 And, through the grated casement of my lair,— 
 
 Was it some guardian spirit’s wakeful eye 
 The captive keeping P — one mild, silver star, 
 Benignant, beamed. Meanwhile, of angel war, 
 
 Fierce waged in heaven against the Eternal king, 
 
 Of great Messiah, in his cherub car, 
 
 Routing the foe, — I heard the minstrel sing, — [4] 
 
 And heaven’s magnific vault with clash of conflict ring! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Then, in extatic whispers, of the love 
 And joy, and peace, and harmony, that reigns 
 Unceasing, ’mid the radiant choir above, 
 
 Now war is o’er, — he sang: anon, in strains 
 Sonorous chaunted how, on burning plains, 
 
 Rallied the fallen warriors’ myriad host, 
 
 And hurled defiance, ’spite of fiery pains 
 And torments, at the Conqueror, — their vain boast 
 Of strength original maintaining — although lost ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 The mighty stature, and still mightier pride 
 And energy of him who 4 seemed alone 
 ‘ Th’ antagonist of heaven’ — in gloom descried 
 Breasting the flaming waves, or, on the throne 
 Of stately Pandemonium regal grown, 
 
 And confident in ruin, — the high seer, 
 
 Filled with his theme, in deep unearthly tone 
 Rehearsed, — while I, entranced with pleasing fear, 
 Imagined I beheld the proud archangel near ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Thus night sped on until the golden lyre 
 And song magnificent brought sense of rest, 
 
 As late they woke the spirit’s sleepless fire : 
 
 So breathe, conjunctive, at Her high behest, 
 
 Nature’s great servitors, to make Man blest — 
 
 Maugre his foes ! — the Muse and Phantasy, 
 
 Hope, Music, Sleep: until into his nest — 
 
 Straw on an iron slab — he sinks with glee — 
 
 Ev’n where the lordlings trow he pines in misery ! 
 
THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Nor did my minstrel guest upon me look 
 Farewell — until the soul her mystic flight, — 
 
 Leaving the flesh to slumber, — once more took: 
 
 When, o’er Death’s sea, by supernatural might 
 Upborne, we seemed to speed, and then to’ alight 
 Together on that ‘ boundless continent 
 ‘ Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of Night, 
 
 ‘ Starless exposed’ [5] — where wandered souls that rent 
 Themselves, unbidden, from their earthly tenement. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Familiar seemed that drear and gloomy land 
 Unto the stately Shade with whom 1 trod 
 The swamp and rock o’er which the ghastly band 
 Essayed their march. But, now T , as if some god 
 Potential had transfixed them by his nod, 
 
 The chasms forgot to yawn, the rocks to roll 
 And threaten, warlike meteors to forebode, 
 
 And spectres ceased their gibings fierce and foul : 
 
 H orror was hushed; and, patient, owned the bard’s control 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Swiftly we threaded through the caverned aisle 
 Of wondrous masonry; and, forthwith, passed 
 Thorough the vault that seemed sepulchral pile 
 Scooped from primeval rock. Then with light haste 
 Upborne again, as if on gentle blast 
 Pillowed, or winged away by flying steed 
 Invisible, we neared a mountain vast, 
 
 Where toiled a troop thinking its height would lead 
 Up to some happier clime from pains of penance freed. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Aloft we floated, passing crowd on crowd, 
 
 Their guises varied as the flowers a-field, 
 
 While with all nameless hues their features glowed, 
 Betokening them self-exiles, unannealed, 
 
 From every mortal clime. Still up we wheeled 
 Our flight, reaching no summit, — countless souls 
 Hard toiling upwards being still revealed, 
 
 As if the discontented in huge shoals 
 Had hither ’scaped from Earth’s old hated prison walls I 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 61 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Our flying travel ended where a grove 
 Grew on the mount. ’Midst, sat a form which seemed 
 With raised right hand to mock the pomp of Jove 
 Hurling his lightnings. Asking, as I dreamed, 
 
 Who this might be — ’twas 4 he who to be deemed 
 4 A god leapt fondly into Etna flames — 
 
 4 Empedocles’ [6] — the bard replied ; while gleamed 
 From the throned figure looks of one who aims 
 Unto some high pretension to assert his claims. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Methought, on this aspiring form I gazed 
 Until a youth, who downcast looked, and coy, 
 
 Came near ; when wond’ring that he never raised 
 His eyes, I asked what thoughts him might employ : 
 The minstrel said, ’twas 4 he who to enjoy 
 4 Plato’s Elysium leapt into the sea — 
 
 4 Cleombrotus’ [7] — and, the fanatic bov 
 Thus briefly named, my minstrel guide from me 
 Departed. [8] I, to follow felt I was not free. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Perplex’d, I seemed awhile, to look*around, 
 
 And wistfully to think of mother Earth ; 
 
 But soon all thought and consciousness were bound 
 Unto that mountain region : I felt dearth 
 Of earthly sense, as heretofore, but birth 
 Of intellection ; for the spirits twain, 
 
 Of Hellas sprung, seemed now, in words of worth, 
 Though without mortal sound, of their soul’s stain 
 And essences of things, to speak in fervid strain. 
 
 xxvii. m 
 
 Sage Agrigentine, shall we never leave 
 Our earth-born weaknesses P — the youth began : 
 
 Ages of thought, since Hades did receive 
 Our spirits, have elapsed, by mortal span, — 
 
 Still, from the great disciplinarian 
 
 Stern Truth, we slowly learn ! A juggler’s dupe 
 
 Thou art, ev’n now — thyself the charlatan ! 
 
 Nay ! — like an intellectual eagle, stoop 
 Upon thy quarry, Self-Deceit, with conquering swoop! 
 
62 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Vainly, thou know’st, thou wilt seek worshippers 
 Of thy proud foolery, here. Before thee fall 
 No votaries ; and thy own spirit stirs, 
 
 In vain, her sovereignty to re-enthral 
 By harbouring old thoughts terrestrial : 
 
 None will thy godship own ! Thy rock descend, 
 Laying stale follies by, and let us call 
 Forth from the mind the vig’rous powders that rend 
 Fate’s curtain ; and our ken beyond these shades extend !■ 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 The younger Hellene ceased ; and, while he spake, 
 
 The elder changed, like one who having quaffed 
 The madd’ning cup, up from his couch doth wake, 
 
 And — told by crowds that old Lyoean craft [9] 
 
 Beguiled him, till he skipt, and mouthed, and laught, 
 As one moon-struck, — now, ebriate with rage, 
 
 Dashes to earth the foul venenose draught: 
 
 So changed, from pride to ire, the thought-smit sage : 
 As if the soul now spurned her self-wrought vassalage. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Descending his imaginary throne 
 With haste, upon the rugged granite peak 
 He seemed to’ have laid his fancied godhead down ; 
 For, like to glow that crimsons mortal cheek, 
 
 A glow of shame came o’er the lofty Greek, 
 
 When, ’midst the grove, upon the mountain’s sward 
 He stood, and, couched in phrase antique, 
 
 Poured forth his inmost thoughts. A rapt regard 
 Rendered the youth while thus discoursed the ancient bard 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Cleombrotus, thou humblest me ; yet I 
 Thy debtor am : fraternal chastisement 
 Our spirits need, even here — O mystery 
 Inexplicable ! Vainly, on earth outwent 
 The mind on high discovery, prescient 
 Herself esteeming of her after-state ; 
 
 For Ease, Pain’s issue, here, is incident, 
 
 As to Earth’s clime ; and all unlike our fate 
 To what we did in mortal life prognosticate. 
 
OP UICIDES. 
 
 63 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Thou finest not here deep ecstacy absorb 
 With ravishment perpetual the soul; 
 
 Although Elysian dreams yon dreaming orb 
 Enticed thee to forsake, and flee to goal 
 Eternal. Neither do fierce fires control 
 Our thought with mystic torture, as they feign 
 On earth, who now affright, and then cajole 
 Poor trampled earthworms — picturing joy or pain 
 Ghostly, until the mind subserves the body’s chain. 
 
 xxxm. 
 
 Here, as on earth, we feel our woe or joy 
 Is of and from ourselves : the yearning mind 
 Her own beatitude, and its alloy, 
 
 Creates, and suffering ever intertwined, 
 
 She proves, with error. Fool — I am, and blind — 
 Amidst my fancied wisdom ! What impels 
 The soul to err ? If in the right she find 
 Her happiness concentred, why rebels 
 The will c gainst the judgment till it foams and swells, 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 A tempest, — aided by the raging blast 
 Of passion, — and the yielding soul is whirled 
 Helplessly into guilt’s black gulf, or cast 
 On death’s sharp breakers P What hath hither hurled 
 Thy bark and mine P Our senses’ sails upfurled 
 We did esteem, by sage Philosophy, 
 
 Yet was our vessel caught where fiercest curled 
 The furious billows, and poor shipwrecks we 
 Were left — even while we boasted our dexterity ! 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Thou, whilst aspiring after fuller bliss 
 Than earth affords, wert maddened with desire 
 To realize some pure hypostasis 
 Platonic dreamers fable from their sire, 
 
 The Academian : I, consuming fire 
 Felt daily in my veins to see my race 
 Emerge from out the foul defiling mire 
 Of animal enjoyments that debase 
 Their nature, and well-nigh its lineaments efface. 
 
64 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 1 burned to see my species proudly count 
 Themselves for more than brutes ; and toiled to draw 
 Them on to drink at Virtue’s living fount, 
 
 Whence purest pleasures flow. Alas ! I saw 
 Old vice had them besotted till some awe, 
 
 Some tinge of mystery, must be allied 
 With moral lessons; or, a futile law 
 My scholars would esteem them. Not in pride 
 To Etna’s yawning gulph the Agrigentine hied : 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 I loved my kind ; and, eager to exalt 
 Them into gods, to be esteemed a god 
 1 coveted : thinking none would revolt 
 From godlike virtue when the awful nod 
 Divine affirmed its precepts. Thus, to fraud 
 Strong zeal for virtue led me ! Canst thou blame 
 My course ? I tell thee, thirst for human laud 
 Impelled me not: ’twas my sole-thoughted aim 
 To render Man, my brother, worthy his high name ! 
 
 xxxvm. 
 
 So spake Empedocles ; and him the youth 
 Thus answered : — Mystery, that ever grows 
 More complex as we, ardent, seek for truth, 
 
 Doth still encompass us ! Thy words disclose 
 A tide of thoughts ; and o’er my spirit flows 
 Wave after wave, bearing me, nerveless, from 
 My fancied height : as when, by acheful throes, 
 Self-castaway, the shelving rock I clomb, 
 
 The sea asserted o’er my limbs its masterdom. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 My chiefest marvel is that Wisdom’s son, 
 
 Thyself, should, after ages have gone o’er 
 Him, and his race unto the tomb is run, 
 
 Still feel anxieties which earth’s old shore 
 Convert to hell. Empedocles, no more 
 Mix palliation with confession, guise 
 Of fraud with truth ! If, in thy heart’s deep core, 
 Thou hadst not erred, why, by the grand assize 
 Of the soul’s Judge, dost thou in Hades agonize ? 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 65 
 
 XL. 
 
 No longer from thy judgment seek to hide 
 
 The truth indisputable — that thy heart 
 
 Was moved, like every human heart, by pride — 
 
 That subtle poison which with fatal smart, 
 
 Man’s spirit penetrates, and doth impart 
 Its hateful tinct even to his pearliest deeds. 
 
 Whence rise the spectrous forms that flit athwart 
 Thy mental vision here ? Thy thought — why breeds 
 It still Pride’s haughty plant, unless from earth-sown seeds ? 
 
 XLI. 
 
 I question not the truth of thy deep love 
 For virtue, for man’s happiness thy zeal. [11] 
 Empedocles, thou knowest my soul hath clove 
 To thine for ages, in these shades : we feel 
 Our heart congenial while we thus reveal 
 Its spiritual throbbings, Not in hate 
 Or mockery do I once again appeal 
 Unto thy nobler thought : though sad our state, 
 
 Let us from self-deceit the soul emancipate ! 
 
 XLI I. 
 
 He ceased ; and thus the Agrigentine sage 
 Replied : — Cleombrotus, in me, again, 
 
 Thou call’st forth gratitude : self-cozenage, 
 
 How low, how mean, how imbecile and vain ! 
 
 Yet, humbled, I discern its hateful stain 
 Within my essence, still : Would thou hadst torn 
 My last disguise away, and bruised the reign 
 Of my deceits, eternally! — Upborne [sojourn. 
 
 From hence, then would the soul find some more blest 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 And why cannot the soul her strength exert 
 Even now ? Age after age this irksome feud 
 With frailty we sustain, or, all inert, 
 
 Droop o’er our woe, and, passive mourn ! Endu’d 
 With power our being is : this torpitude 
 Let us shake off! We loathe the stain we see 
 Still cleaving to us : let the will denude 
 The soul of frailty ! Now for victory 
 
 Let essence dare, and scale this Mount of Vanity ! 
 
 5 F 
 
66 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 With wild fanatic light his visage glowed 
 And kindred fire began, forthwith, to gleam 
 In the youth’s eyes : — With mystic might endowed 
 I feel we are ! — he cried : with might supreme ! 
 
 The soul shall sun herself amid the beam 
 Extatic, where Elysian flowers bloom 
 In fields of ceaseless verdure, and where stream 
 The waters of rejuvenescence ! Gloom 
 Shall cease ! these shades are not the soul’s perpetual doom! — 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Now, let us mount ! Haste, haste, Empedocles ! 
 
 My brother, haste ! Our spirits’ law delay 
 Brooks not : let us the favouring current seize 
 That now 7 the soul bears onward ! — 
 
 Swift away, 
 
 I saw them, as I dreamed, sanguine and gay 
 Of heart as children, join the toiling crew 
 Of motley shapes and guises, that for aye, 
 
 Clomb up to gain some peak, winning no view, 
 
 They sought, but seeming, still, their struggle to renew. 
 
 XL VI. 
 
 And, as I dreamed, methought, the motley mob 
 Babbled of names that every earthly clime 
 Have filled with strife until the feverous throb 
 Issued in darkest, deadliest deeds of crime — 
 
 Each deed still hallow T ed by the things of slime, 
 
 The vermin priests. Amid the hubbub wild 
 ‘ Cross,’ ‘crescent,’ ‘ hell’ and heaven made strange chime 
 With ‘ Tartarus’ ‘Elysium’; and some smiled, 
 
 While others gnashed th eir teeth ; but all still upward toiled. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 My spirit, with a vague, wild ardour rapt, 
 
 Seemed speedily to mingle with this host. 
 
 And, as I gazed, sleek, supple forms that aped 
 Deep sanctity, sighing, trudged on, and crossed 
 Themselves. Of sable hue, full many a ghost 
 Was there that called on Boodh, and Juggernaut, 
 Veeshnu, and Seeva, and Kalee: these tossed 
 Their frantic forms, and writhed, and wildly smote 
 Upon their breasts — seeming wdth extasy distraught. 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 67 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 And turbann’d shapes were there that proudly frowned 
 On all around them, and f Allah akbar !’ 
 
 Proclaimed : whereat ‘ Christ shield us from Mahound !* 
 A band exclaimed that signs of antique war 
 Displayed, their zeal and guise alike bizarre, 
 
 Shifted in steel and visored, while loud rung 
 The spiritual air with holy jar 
 Of chivalrous chartel they fiercely flung 
 At their grim Paynim foemen, with obstrep’rous tongue. 
 
 XL1X. 
 
 Nor shrunk from challenge to renew earth’s strife 
 The scowling Moslems, but with bitter jeer 
 And scoff retorted. Soon the tumult rife 
 And fiery grew : the lank Jew hurled his sneer 
 Alike at knightly pilgrim and austere 
 Follower of Islam ; Budhist and Bramin crazed ; 
 
 And mingling curse of Turk, Jew, bonze, fakir, 
 Templar, monk, palmer, santon, hermit — raised 
 A din so dread that ev’n its utt’rers stared, amazed. 
 
 L. 
 
 Anon, came on a crew that swift outsped, 
 
 And soon outdinned with more relentless curse, 
 
 This bitter cursing crowd. High overhead 
 The bannered Lamb and Dove did misrehearse 
 The spite with which their vot’ries sought to nurse 
 Fiend passions in each other. Paradox 
 And Mystery hurling with malicious force, 
 
 These fight along, — and each his brother mocks 
 With taunt of ‘ schism!’ — while dealing round him sturdy 
 
 Anathemas and hells eternal waged 
 They next against each other, — -losing sense 
 Of their strange afterstate, — so madly raged 
 Each bigot at his fellow’s difference 
 Of madness. Memory of their woes intense 
 Returning, each made halt and turned to scorn 
 His neighbour’s cowardice, with spite prepense, 
 For blighted self-destroyer that must mourn 
 In endless pain, with torturous hope of end still torn. 
 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII. 
 
 And now gave o’er their lunatic pursuit 
 The Graian sage and youth I first perceived 
 Upon the mount. Amid the mad dispute 
 Of million zealots they seemed each bereaved 
 Of self-possession, till, anon they cleaved 
 A way from out the crowd, and sat them down, 
 
 Wearied and strife- worn, while their spirits grieved 
 With more than mortal agony : all flown [zone ! 
 
 Their dreams, and their wild hopes brought back to Hades’ 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Long space, and gloomy, of existence past, 
 
 In which, with silent grief, the spirits twain * 
 
 Seemed overwhelmed, and each enthusiast 
 His face averted from his brother, fain 
 To hide his shame, and struggling to sustain 
 His own peculiar woe. At length outburst 
 Cleombrotus, unable to restrain 
 His swelling sorrow : — Evermore accurst — 
 
 He cried, — be memory of him who kindled thirst 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Within me for some vaguely’ imagined good, 
 
 Unproven by the soul, and whether ill 
 Or good unknown ; since oft false likelihood 
 Befools the mind, oft she impels the will 
 To grasp a hemlock where she thought to fill 
 Her embrace with the rose. My mortal state 
 Why did I scorn ? Not seldom, sweetest thrill 
 Of pleasure follows pain : joys mitigate 
 Worst woe : Men share no irremediable fate : 
 
 LV. 
 
 Sorrow, on earth, hath uses : nutritive 
 Of joy griefs often prove ; and power to find 
 Pleasures unfound before pains, friendly, give. 
 
 O state beyond compare ! and for the mind 
 And body framed benignly! Weak and blind 
 And thoughtless was my wish for unmixt joy 
 Perpetual, since alternate pain designed 
 Satiety of pleasure to destroy 
 I now discern. Could ceaseless pleasure fail to cloy ? 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 69 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Alas ! in vain I reason ! — vainly charge 
 My tortured spirit with her last foul leap — 
 
 Her darkest deepest stain ! While on the marge 
 Of jeopardy this lessoning might keep 
 The soul from error ; but when once the steep 
 She clears, sage counsels no deliverance bring. 
 
 Yet, why do 1 permit despair to sweep 
 Away all hope ? Unto the weakest thing, 
 
 For help, the seaman ’midst the strife of death will cling : 
 
 LVII. 
 
 To weeds — to quicksands — to the cresting foam 
 Of the wild waves themselves! And shall she sink, 
 
 The deathless spirit, — in self-exiled home, — 
 
 Where yet remains her boundless power to think ? 
 
 0 luxury ineffable, — since link 
 To link the spiritual Cyclops swift 
 And strong may forge, — till to the very brink 
 Of space her tether reach ! This matchless gift 
 Is still her portion : shall she not of it make thrift ? 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Empedocles, my brother, once more tell 
 To me thy spirit’s woes or joys : once more 
 Let us together struggle to expel 
 Our sense of pain, and the wide realm explore 
 Of deepest cogitation : that vast shore 
 We can, unfettered, visit, and still glean 
 Its metaphysic splendours, as of yore : 
 
 Let us our travel to the fair demesne 
 Of Mind essay, — the land of truest evergreen ! 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Cleombrotus, my spirit doth respond 
 To thine, with joy ! — replied Empedocles : 
 
 The soul her winged steed, caparison’d 
 For venturous travel, mounts, and on the breeze 
 Discursive pants to ride : from far she sees 
 Her promised conquests ; for thou well hast told, 
 
 And truly, intellective pleasures please 
 When other joys are joyless. But, behold ! 
 
 Where comes to share our converse the wise Indian old ; 
 
70 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 He whom Emathian Philip’s son beheld 
 Amazed, — while pealing trumpets cleaved the sky, 
 And warrior hosts the wondering tumult swelled — 
 Ride, on his goaded steed, undauntedly, 
 
 Into the funeral flame, — scorning to die 
 By nature’s gradual law ! Hail Calanus ! [12] — 
 The sage spake on — for, now, the Indian nigh 
 Appeared ; — full timely comest thou with us 
 To share, as often, erst the descant emulous. 
 
 LXI. 
 
 The theme of mystery, — What being is, 
 
 Begin ! Whence Pain and Pleasure, Hope, Despair? 
 Why Truth in endless metamorphosis 
 Doth shroud herself. How Wisdom may declare 
 Her pr-ecepts best ; and how she best may snare 
 The vulgar crowd her lessons to observe, 
 
 Thereby to elevate and bless — 
 
 Forbear ! — 
 
 The Indian cried, with intellectual nerve 
 Throned in his glance* — Blindly thou dost from wisdom 
 
 [swerve 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Empedocles, in sooth I say thou erFst, 
 
 As when on earth. Yet, thy clay trammels thou, 
 
 By long sojourn in Hades, shouldst have burst. 
 Falsehood and ignorance will ever bow 
 The human soul ; and urge it, base and low, 
 
 To grovel in the dust. Falsehood and sooth 
 Breed no amalgam. Flame from flood shall flow, — 
 The summer’s sun shed drops congealed, — and Youth 
 Be sire unto Old Age. — ere Lies shall nurture Truth ! 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 O Greek, called wise, think how old earth hath mourned 
 And bled, through ages, by the mixture foul 
 Of fraud with truth ! Would that thy heart suborned 
 Had never been by pride, a false control 
 To forge for Virtue o’er the human soul ! 
 
 How would the universal race of man 
 Have joined thy lofty labour to extol, — 
 
 Thy high emprise of goodness, if the ban 
 Of evil mystery had not obscured thy plan ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 71 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 I speak not here to wound thee; but I joy 
 That Vulcan’s fabled forge cast out, in scorn, 
 
 Thy sandal’s brazen soles, for base alloy, [13] 
 
 And thus the flimsy veil in twain was torn 
 That hid thy apish godhead. Hadst thou worn 
 The false divinity thou sought’st, thy shrine 
 Had only swelled the slavish burthen borne 
 By sottish man of priestly craft malign : — 
 
 Th’ enwoven fraud had frustrated thy scheme benign ! 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Eager response unto the Indian gave 
 The Agrigentine bard : — If not by aid • 
 
 Of harmless fraud, — he said, — how could’st thou save 
 The sons of degradation that have strayed 
 In Folly’s paths until the comely maid, 
 
 Fair Virtue, seems, from her uncomely dress, 
 
 Unfair ? 
 
 Call not fraud — harmless ! — said the Shade 
 With sable visage : — Shadow bodiless 
 Of Fraud would curse a world with its flagitiousness : 
 
 LX VI. 
 
 Tinct, grain of falsehood, would a cureless plague, 
 
 A leprosy o’ th’ heart, in mankind breed ! 
 
 Empedocles, — thy wisdom still is vague, 
 
 Miscalculating, blind ; and still succeed 
 To thee, on earth, they who mankind mislead, 
 
 Without thy real philanthropy engrafled 
 Within thsir hearts, but mixing with their greed 
 For praise or gold, a larger share of craft : [laughed ! 
 
 ow long and loud the fablers at the easy world have 
 
 lxvii. 
 
 And still sleek fablers thrive ; whilst thou to flame 
 Gav’st thy frail life, and for thyself hast won — 
 
 What ? — Folly’s laurels and a madman’s fame ! 
 
 The time will come, 0 Hellene ! when the sun 
 Shall look upon a world no more o’errun 
 With slaves to sensualism ; when haggard Spite, 
 
 And frowning Pride, and Envy pale shall shun 
 Truth’s glorious beams, and Love’s celestial light— 
 They twain that shall be one, by hymeneals bright ! 
 
72 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 Glad Earth shall wed them : to the nuptial- feast, 
 
 The banquet sempiternal, new-born Faith 
 Shall call the nations: fairest Peace, sweet Rest, 
 
 And holy Joy, shall minister with breath 
 Ambrosial at the bridal : demon wrath 
 Against their brethren, cruelty through lure 
 Of gold, strife for the conqu’ror’s wreath of death, 
 
 The strong shall loathe : the weak shall wear, secure, 
 Their stronger brethren’s love — that heaven-wrought 
 
 [armature ! 
 
 LXIX* 
 
 How blest that nuptial reign ! The strong shall seek 
 Their strength to nurture, hourly, with the dews 
 Of Pity’ and Mercy ; visiting, with meek 
 Yet fervid zeal, Pain’s couch, and Want’s purlieus ; 
 Creating health for sickness, hopeful views 
 Of life for dark despondence ; breaking bread 
 To weeping orphans ; and the withered thews 
 Of age cheering with raiment ; till, outspread [tread ! 
 
 In smiles, Earth is one mother’s hearth where brethren 
 
 LXX. 
 
 The time will come ! But, ere that bridal-day 
 Dawn on our ancient home, Knowledge must win, 
 
 By toilsome steps and slow, her widening way : 
 Knowledge, — the new-born world’s great heroine 
 That shall be — when, of knight and paladin, 
 
 Tartar and Mameluke, legion and cohort 
 And phalanx, fame hath fled ; when War’s huge sin 
 Hath ceased ; and ‘ Glory’ ravening kings’ fell sport, 
 Is chronicled with tales of murderous report. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 O Greek, hadst thou a lowly pioneer 
 Aspired to be of Knowledge, and disdained 
 To be esteemed, by Greeks, a fit compeer 
 Of myriad mongrel gods, mankind had gained 
 By thee, perchance, a gift worth thanks unfeigned ; 
 And lasting honours to thy memory 
 Exultant lands had rendered, disenchained 
 From ignorance, and craft, and tyranny : 
 
 Yet it will come — that trump of world-spread jubilee! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 73 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 The time will come ! Young Knowledge on her march 
 Already speeds ! Her march of suffering toil, 
 
 And peaceful hardihood, of patient search 
 And tireless zeal : forth from his snaky coil 
 Old Superstition springs, and Power his foil 
 Of sword and chain opposeth to her steps — 
 
 But all in vain ! She counts them for a spoil ! 
 
 And conquering and to conquer, forth she sweeps 
 O’er alp, and vale, and strand ; and bounds across the deeps ! 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Now beams on Thule’s shore her genial torch : 
 
 Yea, there her central temple proudly stands : 
 
 And lo ! who greets her at the stately porch — 
 
 An awful-fronted sage, from whom her hands 
 Receive an ensign which on high expands 
 Amid the breeze: that peerless gonfalon 
 Monarchs and Priests behold, and think their sands 
 Are numbered; for aghast, they read upon [undone! 
 Its scroll ‘Knowledge is Power!’ They fear their craft 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 They quake — they bow — and soon shall disappear 
 Their twin theurgies — for the nations wake ! 
 Knowledge, the great Enfranchiser, is near! 
 
 Yet, though their bonds the wide world’s helots break, 
 They seek not in their tyrants’ blood to slake 
 A thirst for vengeance : Knowledge desolates 
 No mother’s hearth — no brother’s home: they take 
 Revenge in mercy, whom she’ emancipates : 
 
 His carrion maw, tracking her steps, no vulture sates: 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 The dogs of carnage prowl not where she treads : 
 Beneath her steps the sterile desart smiles ; 
 
 And o’er the wintry waste its perfume sheds 
 The vernal rose : along the forest aisles 
 Earth’s seraphim awake : her breath beguiles 
 Old Nature’s self! I see their rays appear — 
 
 The beauteous bridal pair ! Through islet piles 
 I hear the shout that Truth and Love are near: 
 
 For Knowledge wins her way — their radiant harbinger ! — 
 
74 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 So spake the Indian sage, and stood enrapt 
 In ecstasy prophetic, as, of old, 
 
 The Pythoness afflate who, struggling, shaped 
 To mortal sounds what the Immortal told. 
 
 Silence applausive, that with mystic mould 
 Of fleshless forms consorts, followed. His trance 
 Of admiration first the youth controlled : 
 
 I burn with wish, — he said, — that Fate or Chance 
 Had granted us of clay a later heritance : 
 
 LXXVIl. 
 
 What raptures then had been our portion ! Now 
 We wrestle with our lot in hope : for yet 
 Hope unto us remains ; and on thy brow, 
 
 O Calanus, methinks, are brightly met 
 Rays of a hope for Hades. Shall thy debt 
 And ours to anger’d Providence be purged 
 By ages of endurance, here, beset 
 With strange alternate woes ? For either urged 
 By hope we strive ; or, in despair all strife is merged : 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 In wretchedness of dull, grave-cold despair. 
 
 Say, sable spirit, what thou know’st of rest 
 That shall be ours ! — 
 
 With look of anxious care, 
 
 He ceased, impatient for reply. Unblest, 
 
 Humbled, regretful, thought and speech confest 
 Empedocles ; and, ere his deeper guage 
 Of thought the Indian took, thus urged his quest : 
 
 Some glimpse of joy, — he said, — my thoughts presage: — 
 This shall not be the soul’s eternal heritage : 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 The spirit shall escape her prison-house : 
 
 But thou, 0 Sage, — to whom pow’rs more intense 
 Hath brought deep knowledge, — who with luminous 
 Perceptions art endowed, and opulence 
 Of reasoning power, like to the prescience 
 Of gods, — tell forth what hope of blissful end 
 To these our changeful woes, or what suspense 
 Of agony, thou dost foreknow. Could we amend 
 The past, my soul should truth no more with foul fraud blend*. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 75 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Bright truth with grovelling fraud. Too late I see 
 Wide wanderings with my fancied rectitude 
 Enmixt. But why this Mount of Vanity, — 
 
 So called by souls that have, for aye, renewed 
 Their strife to win its peak, — still unsubdued 
 Their sanguine zeal, though fruitless, — why assign 
 The gods our portion here ? Torturous soul-feud 
 Of myriad forms hath Hades, — but divine, — 
 
 If that thou canst, — why hold we this abhorr’d confine ? 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 What Power appoints to us, with minds at large, 
 
 This mountain-prison? Why, in this duresse, 
 
 Deemed we, but now, our spirits on the marge, 
 
 Of extasy’s eternal boundlessness, 
 
 And then, again, surged, wrecked, and shelterless, 
 
 On agony’s shore, ourselves imagined ? Though 
 Mysterious agencies on us impress 
 Their purposes, — thou, Calanus, mayst know 
 What these, the wondering soul’s perplexities, foreshow.— 
 
 LXXXI I. 
 
 Perplexed I am for answer, — in my dream 
 The Indian seemed to say : Here banishment 
 From earth is self-inflicted ; and I deem 
 Some mystic law consociates spirits pent 
 In this strange realm of penance. They who rent 
 Themselves from earth, impelled by painful force 
 Of ill-requited passion, live unblent 
 With spirits who through torturous remorse 
 Fled hither to embrace the self-destroyer’s curse. 
 
 LXXXI1I. 
 
 And they whom slights and treacheries have pierced 
 With thousand arrows; or, whom children’s hate 
 Hath heart-galled ; or whose actions misrehearsed, 
 
 The pitiless world hath phrensied ; or, whom Fate 
 Or circumstance hath failed to elevate 
 Above their fellows, till by their own hand 
 They severed life’s frail bonds, a various state 
 Hold here. From these the Poet and the Patriot band, 
 Self-exiles, dwell apart, in this mysterious land. 
 
76 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXXIV, 
 
 Nor seems it purposeless that we who reft 
 Ourselves of earth’s mixt joys through thirst to drink 
 Of extasy unmixt, should thus be left 
 At large, as heretofore, to dream and think ; 
 
 And, while imagining we reach the brink 
 Of purest joy, should feel ourselves still tossed 
 On hope’s conflicting wave, then feebly sink 
 Desponding. If, upon this mystic coast, 
 
 Each wandering soul with dreams and visions be engrossed 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Analogous to dreams and visions which 
 In mortal life engrossed her, ’midst the crowd 
 Of stern realities, — if glozing speech 
 Mislead her, as on earth, — and mists enshroud 
 Her vision till all being with a cloud 
 Is wrapt, — and doubt asks whether she exists 
 Or not, — why, let our struggling will be bowed ! 
 
 It is our spirits’ law, — and, as Fate lists 
 We live : in vain this law our rebel will resists. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 Shall we live thus for ever, — or hath hope 
 Foundation firm for joys — pure joys to come ? 
 Perplexed I answer: We but guess and grope 
 For this the jewel of our search : unwomb 
 Herself Truth may : but, in the heart of gloom 
 She still hides this her gem of gems. The mind 
 Oft asks how gods their progeny can doom 
 To endless, hopeless woe : but what, if blind 
 Necessity grasps all ! Who shall her grasp unbind ? 
 
 LXXXVI i. 
 
 Oft speak we of deep sympathies enwove 
 In flesh-freed Essences with men on earth, 
 
 Foretelling that when Truth shall wed with Love 
 ’Mong mortals, spirits in Hades shall, thenceforth, 
 Experience wondrous change, — the soul new birth 
 Shall have of wisdom, — false distinctions cease, — 
 
 Or they have highest honour who in worth 
 Of virtue most excel, — penance to peace 
 For ever shall be changed, — and ever know increase ! 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 77 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 With ye not seldom, Hellenes sage, I share 
 
 These sanguine thoughts; but souls of Kings ask whence 
 
 Derive we our bright hope. Summons I bear 
 
 Unto our mountain realm — that high souls hence 
 
 Betake them where, in pictured affluence 
 
 Of power, Monarchs hold thrones, when lapse of pain 
 
 To them, with us, Nature’s behests dispense. 
 
 Since Kings yield parley, think ye that in vain [tain ? 
 Truth’s devotees ’fore thrones shall themes of Truth main- 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 Spirits, ye beam with thoughts that antedate 
 Triumph of Truth and Right; and I partake 
 Your deep prophetic joy. What though dark hate 
 Bosoms of kings usurps ? — Love shall awake 
 In gentleness omnipotent, and make 
 Her meekest throne within their souls, — for they 
 Are human, — and all human souls shall break 
 Their vassalage to Wrong. Alas !— dismay 
 Of doubt begins, anew, to seek me for its prey ! 
 
 xc. 
 
 Empedocles ! — Cleombrotus ! — our life 
 In Hades, as on earth, is mystery : 
 
 Our being is a contest and a strife 
 
 With its own essence : struggling to be free 
 
 We add unto our fetters : while we flee — 
 
 Or think we flee — from folly, we are more 
 Than ever fools ! The soul, a refugee 
 In Hades from Earth’s woes, her woes deplore 
 In deeper woe may, endlessly ; — or with new power 
 
 xci. 
 
 Endowed, may yet launch out her fragile bark 
 Adventurously, and find some sea of bliss, — 
 
 Some unknown flood of light, — and, far from dark 
 And dismal storms of doubt, emparadise 
 Herself — 
 
 Anon, from vague hypothesis 
 The Indian fell again to doubtings void, 
 
 Till like his speech, his form itself, I wis, 
 
 Grew dim ; and with its brother forms did glide 
 Into the womb of Nought: — the vision was destroyed. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 [1] Stanza 4. — It may be necessary, for some readers, to 
 say that the apostrophe, in this stanza, is to Chaucer ; and, in 
 the few succeeding stanzas, to Spenser, Shakspere, Byron 
 and Shelley, and Milton. 
 
 [2] Stanza 5. — “Nouriture.” — The critics again affirm that 
 I have sinned in using this fine old word for nurture . — I do 
 not believe them. 
 
 [3] Stanza 10.— Comus. 
 
 [4] Stanza 16. — In plain prose, I mean that my rehearsal 
 of Milton, during the long hours of darkness in my sleeping 
 cell, frequently converted the gloom into a season of ecstasy. 
 I had committed three books of “ Paradise Lost” to memory, 
 while at the last , twenty years before my imprisonment ; 
 and I thus was enabled to realise the high value of such an 
 inalienable possession. 
 
 [5] [6] and [7] Stanzas 20, 24, and 25. — Paradise Lost. 
 
 [8] Stanza 25. — In reply to another critic (I beg pardon 
 of my readers for referring so often to the labours of these 
 gentlemen) — I beg to say that the idea of presenting Milton 
 as my guide to the second imaginary visit to Hades, was not 
 copied from Dante. I have never, to this moment, read 
 Dante, either in the original, or in a translation ; but I find, 
 from a prose analysis of the “ Divina Commedia,” contained 
 in a periodical, that Dante presents Virgil as his guide during 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 79 
 
 his entire vision of “ Hell, Purgatory and Paradise “ My 
 minstrel guide from me departed’’ as soon as he had named 
 Empedocles and Cleombrotus ; and is merely affirmed to have 
 been my companion on the second “ journey of a dream.” 
 While my mind was tilled with Milton it was simply natural, 
 and needed no stretch of the conception thus to present him. 
 Certes, it is a most pitifully prevalent fashion, in these keen- 
 witted times, to set down even the very commonest thoughts 
 of little people as copies from the Great — to whom all honour, 
 but, not in the shape of untruth ! 
 
 [9] Stanza 29. — “ Lycean craft.” — Lyceus is one of the 
 names of Bacchus. 
 
 [10] Stanza 30. — “The ancient bard.” — The poetical per- 
 formances of Empedocles (without mooting the question of 
 his identity with Empedocles the tragedian) must have been 
 considerable. — Diogenes Laertius (editio Amsteldami : Hen 
 Wetstenii : page 529) records Aristotle’s testimony that the 
 character of the Agrigentine philosopher’s poetry was “Ho - 
 merical,” and takes especial notice of a poem on Xerxes’ 
 transit of the Hellespont, and an address or hymn to the Sun 
 (in Appollinem prooemium.) Fabricius (Biblotheca Grseca : 
 editio Hamburgi : vol. 1, page 811) in the list of the works 
 of Empedocles places three books of hexameter verse on 
 Nature, — 3000 hexameters on Lustrations, and 600 on Medi- 
 cine. In the same volume (familiar to all readers in the 
 British Museum library, on account of its nearness to the 
 catalogue-stand) the “ learned” reader may peruse a speci- 
 men of this philosopher’s poetry, — being 168 lines of Greek, 
 on the Spheres, — and may also acquaint himself with some 
 stout reasons why Empedocles should be considered as the 
 real author of the celebrated “ Golden Verses of Pythagoras.” 
 
 [11] Stanza 41. — The highest testimonies to the philanthro- 
 py, humane exercise of his medical skill, liberality in the 
 disposition of his wealth, and democratic spirit of Empe- 
 docles, are given by Laertius and others.*— See Stanley’s or 
 Enfield’s “ History of Philosophy.” 
 
80 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE SECOND. 
 
 [12] Stanza GO. — tc Calanus.” — The self-immolation of this 
 Indian philosopher, in the presence of Alexander the Great, 
 is described, with some variations of circumstance, by Arrian, 
 Plutarch, and others. King Sudraka, author of the Sanscrit 
 drama “ Mrichchacati, or the Toy Cart,” (recently translated 
 by Professor Horace Hay man Wilson,) also burnt himself 
 to death, as a religious consummation of mortal life, about, 
 it is supposed, 192 years before Christ. 
 
 [13] Stanza 64. — Diogenes Laertius gives authorities for his 
 relation that the mode of Empedocles’ suicide was discovered 
 by the casting up of his brazen sandals from the crater ot 
 Etna : other ancient authors discredit the entire narrative. 
 
THE 
 
 .PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 Hail, glorious Sun ! All hail the captive’s friend ! 
 Giver of purest joys, where Sorrow fain 
 Would enter and abide, and, traitorous, lend 
 Her power to aggravate the tyrant’s chain : 
 
 Great Exorcist, that bringest up the train 
 Of childhood’s joyaunce, and youth’s dazzling dreams 
 From the heart’s sepulchre, until, again, 
 
 I live in extasy, ’mid woods, and streams, 
 
 And golden flowers that laugh while kissed by thy bright 
 
 Ay, once more, mirrored in the silver Trent, 
 
 Thy noon-tide majesty I think I view 
 With boyish wonder ; or, till drowsed and spent 
 With eagerness, peer up the vaulted blue 
 With shaded eyes, watching the lark pursue 
 Her dizzy flight ; then, on a fragrant bed 
 Of meadow sweets still sprent with morning dew, 
 Dream how the heavenly chambers overhead 
 With steps of grace and joy the holy angels tread. 
 
 hi. 
 
 Of voices sweet, and harps with golden wires 
 Touched by the fingers of the seraph throng; 
 
 Of radiant vision which the cherub choirs 
 Witness, with jubilee of rapturous song, 
 
 And without weariness their joy prolong, 
 
 I lie and dream, till, with a start, I wake, 
 
 Thinking my mother’s home is still among 
 Earth’s children, and her yearning heart will ache, 
 
82 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 O heart, now cold in the devouring grave, 
 
 And torn, no more, by scorn and suffering, 
 
 How fondly didst thou to thy darling cleave ! 
 Although thy tyrants but a worthless thing 
 Esteemed him. Rankled, deep, oppression’s sting 
 In thy recesses : still, in hardihood 
 Of conscious right, stern challenge thou didst fling 
 Back at thy foemen and their hireling brood ; 
 
 And beat unto old age with free and youthful blood ! 
 
 v. 
 
 Mother, thy wrongs, the common wrongs of all 
 To labour doomed by proud and selfish drones, 
 Enduringly have fixed the burning gall 
 Deep in my veins — ay, in my very bones. 
 
 I hate ye, things with surplices and crowns ! 
 Serpents that poison, tigers that devour 
 Poor human kind, and fill the earth with groans, 
 Through every clime ! God send ye were no more ! 
 Ye’d have a merry requiem, from shore to shore ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Taxes for king and priest a knave was wont 
 To filch from my poor widowed mother’s toil ; 
 
 And while the prowling jackall held his hunt, 
 
 He battened on the offals of the spoil, 
 
 And mocked the sufferers ! How my blood did boil 
 When lately I beheld a gilded stone 
 Raised to the memory of this vermin vile, 
 
 And pious charity ascribed thereon 
 To him who gray beneath the Poor’s grim curse had grown 
 
 VII. 
 
 I laid my aged mother near the dust 
 Of her oppressor; but no gilded verse 
 Tells how she toiled to win her child a crust, 
 
 And, fasting, still toiled on : no rhymes rehearse 
 How tenderly she strove to be the nurse 
 Of truth and nobleness in her loved boy, 
 
 ’Spite of his rags 
 
 0 Sun ! thou dost amerce 
 My withered heart, for the poor fleeting joy 
 With which thy beams began my sadness to destroy. 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 83 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Bright Gazer on the wilderness of woe 
 Called Earth, dost thou in mockery smile 
 Above, like all thou look’st upon below ? 
 
 I fondly hoped thou wouldst, a little while, 
 
 The captive of his cankerous care beguile ; 
 
 But, for one glimpse of childhood’s cheerful bloom, 
 Thou hast brought back upon my heart a pile 
 Of achings kindred to the dreary tomb ; 
 
 And mak’st me feel I hasten to that realm of gloom. 
 
 IX. 
 
 What — when my torturers have had their fill 
 Of vengeance — if I, once more, freely range, 
 
 Beneath thy radiance, over vale and hill, 
 
 Through tangled wood, by stream, and moated grange, 
 And festooned castle wall ? Deep thoughts of change 
 And sadness will the flowers of childhood bring : 
 
 I shall be c^mpanied with voices strange 
 To childhood’s rapture, and unskilled to sing 
 The merry song with which we made the welkin ring : 
 
 x. 
 
 Sorrow will follow song of matin merle 
 And vesper throstle where young joys I took : 
 
 For, of the dead, where Lindsey’s streamlets pur), 
 Remembrances are writ, in Nature’s book : 
 
 The gentle violet may sweetly look 
 As heavenly blue as it was wont to glow : 
 
 But, like that darling floret by the brook, 
 
 ’Twill breathe — ‘ Forget-me-not !’ — and I shall bow 
 In grief, remembering there that joyous hearts lie low. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Thou gorgeous lamp to light man to the home 
 Appointed for all living ! — though elate 
 With throb of liberty regained I roam 
 O’er paths to Life’s glad morning consecrate, 
 
 Will not thy flame foreshew that for me wait 
 The prison-portals of the grave, and I but stay 
 At large on sufferance ? For, the writ of Fate 
 Will soon arrive, which not a breath’s delay 
 Brooks, of their full surrender, from the forms of clay. 
 
 o 2 
 
84 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Oh ! couldst thou bare that dark captivity 
 From whence, released, none ever yet returned 
 To tell its secrets, how our dreams would flee ! 
 
 Was it to know Death’s truths, in life, that yearned 
 The hoary Kelt who on the cromlech burned 
 His brother, hymning thee, the sky-throned god ? 
 
 For ages, Man thy huge gray shrines hath spurned, 
 Mocking thy worship ; but, like all who trod 
 Earth then, in dreams, still dream the children of the clod ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And thou, thyself, all glorious as thou art, 
 
 Supernal Sun ! — what art thou but a dream ? 
 
 A splendid vanity — a glittering part 
 Of the vast aggregate of things that seem P 
 How know I that with veritable beam 
 Thou dost illume earth and her sister spheres P 
 Or, whether they and thou, meer fictions, teem 
 From Mind, and thy great glory but appears — 
 
 Not is — and will, with thy beholders, fade with years ? 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Hath Mind, more truly, substance, then, than thou, 
 Great Sun ? 
 
 Oh ! how poor human thought doth mock 
 Itself! I think I see : I think I know ! 
 
 What further ? Nought — to worms ! Although ye knock 
 At Truth’s dark barriers, they will bear the shock 
 Till doomsday — if it ever come! If sleep 
 Eternal comes, instead, then, at a stroke, 
 
 Away, it will hope, faith, and doubting sweep : 
 
 And, if we cease to be ; why — we shall cease to weep. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Alas ! — the soul doth seek to gather balm, 
 
 In vain, from barrenness : alternative 
 So frigid, blank, and bare, affords no calm 
 To him whose heart desires for aye to live ; 
 
 And yet doth palpitate, despond, misgive, 
 
 More than it hopes. 
 
 Resplendent light ! now wanes 
 Thy beam ; yet, who the morrow shall survive 
 To see, shall thee behold gilding the plains, 
 
 And hear thy gladdened birds rechant their joyous strains : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 85 
 
 XVI. 
 
 And thus, my brother-worms, in days of eld, 
 
 Looked on thy resurrection, and believed 
 That since thy disentombment they beheld 
 Each morn, thou hadst a symbol for them weaved 
 Of glorious life to follow death : reprieved 
 From fear of what I fear, they danced, they sung, 
 And on the mountains where so late they grieved, 
 And wailed their dead, gay trophies to thee hung, 
 And shouted thy high praise till hill and valley rung : 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Baal, whose mighty tabernacles rose, 
 
 Roofed by the sky, — from Babel to Stonehenge ; 
 Whose Beltein fire her mountain child still shews 
 On Caledonia’s hills, ’spite of all change : 
 
 Boodh, Yeeshnu, Christna, of old gospels strange, 
 Through ages hymned by Hindoo devotee : 
 
 Osiris, whose dark murder to avenge 
 
 Pale Isis nightly glowed o’er Mitzraim’s sea — 
 
 Old priestly Nile that glads the land of mystery. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Mithras, high deity of gorgeous Mede : 
 
 Thammuz, or A dad, of Chaldaic seer, 
 
 Or old Phoenician by the Hebrew’s seed 
 Supplanted : Titan, or Hyperion, fear 
 Of new-fledged gods, assailed in cloudy sphere 
 Olympic : Phoebus or Apollo, bright 
 And young and fair, throughout the rolling year 
 Circled with song, or from the Delphic height, 
 Breathing dim oracles, ’mid priest-enriching rite 
 
 XIX. 
 
 God, claimed by regal Incas as their sire, 
 
 Beyond the wave Columbian, where upcone 
 Earth’s storehouses of silver : Sovereign fire ! 
 
 The young soul’s natural god ! Visible throne 
 Of holy Nature’s Sovereignty unknown, 
 
 Invisible! — by whatsoever name 
 Adored and deified throughout our zone, 
 
 Thy worshippers all held thy risen flame 
 Did for the soul adumbrate some great after-drame ! 
 
86 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 On shadows leaning, these did vaguely urge 
 Their dreaming pilgrimage ; and, lest I lean 
 On shadows, too — though thousand lights converge 
 To deck with loveliness the Nazarene — 
 
 I hesitate, demur, surmise, and glean, 
 
 Daily, new grounds to doubt the Mythic dress — 
 Phoenician woof, once more ! — through which is seen, 
 
 I fear, thy ancient face — bright Comeliness ! — 
 
 Fabling with future life poor grave-doomed worms to bless ! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 He whom the Arimathean’s tomb enclosed — 
 
 The Toiler blest, who on the vile cross died — 
 
 But, ’spite of guards, the bonds of death unloosed, 
 Scattering the men of iron in their pride 
 Convulsed to helplessness, and forth did ride 
 Leading captivity captive ! — Is he not — 
 
 Magnific beam ! — thy power personified — 
 Night-tombed — and, then, pouring dismay and rout 
 On Darkness, while Earth’s million morning-voices shout ? 
 
 XXII. 
 
 I love the Galilean ; Lord and Christ 
 
 Such goodness I could own; and, though enshrined 
 
 In flesh, could worship : If emparadised, 
 
 Beyond the grave, no Eden I could find 
 Restored, though all the good of humankind 
 Were there, and not that yearning One, the Poor 
 Who healed, and fed, and blest ! Nay to my mind, 
 
 Hell would be Heaven, with him ! Horror no more 
 Could fright, if such benignant beauty trod its shore ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 I love the sweet and simple narrative, 
 
 With all its childlike earnestness — the page 
 Quadruple where those love-wrought wonders live: 
 
 I would the tale were true : that heritage 
 
 Of immortality it doth presage 
 
 Would make me glad indeed. But doubts becloud 
 
 Truth’s fountains as their depths I seek to guage, — 
 
 Till with this trustless reck’ning I am bowed — 
 
 Man’s heritage is but a cradle and a shroud ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 87 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Hark! — ’tis the turnkey! — and those bars and bolts 
 Jar their harsh summons to my nightly nook. 
 
 Farewell, grand Sun! How my weax heart revolts 
 At that appalling thought — that my last look 
 At thy great light must come ! Oh ! I could brook 
 The dungeon, though eterne ! — the Priests’ own hell, 
 Ay, or a thousand hells, in thought, unshook, 
 
 Rather than Nothingness ! And yet the knell, 
 
 I fear, is near, that sounds — To consciousness farewell! 
 
 xxv. 
 
 After these day-dreams ’neath the summer’s sun, 
 
 The Soul — I mean, the something that doth think 
 And dream : Name it aright, thou knowing one 
 Who kenn’st the Essence which doth ever shrink 
 From its own scrutiny ! — began to link 
 Night’s images to forms she waking saw 
 
 With the interior eye. 
 
 Upon the brink 
 
 Of a wild lake I stood, viewing, with awe, 
 
 Again unveiled, the realm of suicidal woe ! 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The spacious wave, before me, tempest-gloomed 
 And bleak and storm-tost, howled; and I seemed frore 
 With cold, and, shuddering, felt as if foredoomed 
 To sense of mortal hunger. On the shore 
 I wandered, while my thoughts, amid the roar 
 Of winds and waters, dwelt on One who stilled 
 The waves, and fed the hungry : and the more 
 My spiritual sense with hunger thrilled 
 And cold, the more that Form my inward vision filled. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 And still I wandered by the howling lake, 
 
 Imagining what joy succeeded fear 
 
 In the poor fishers, when their Master spake 
 
 From the night-wave, and said, — ‘Be of good cheer! 
 
 6 ’Tis I !’ — while one sprang out to meet him there, 
 
 But would have sunk, had not the meek One’s hand 
 Him rescued. ‘ Who’ — 1 cried — ‘ would not revere 
 ‘ Such power and love P Worship I, on this strand 
 ‘Would give the Nazarene— did He these waves com- 
 
 [mand/ — 
 
S8 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The soul, in her empassioned working, seemed 
 To’ have spoken audibly, — whereat, a sound 
 Or, what was likest sound — came, as I dreamed, 
 
 Forth from the caves that hemmed that lake around, 
 Appalling, as when one with mortal wound 
 Is struck, and utters his last agony 
 Of wild despair. A face that did astound 
 My spirit met me, as I turned to see 
 What form to wildly wail on that stern shore might be. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Tongue cannot syllable the blighting curse 
 To which that visage gave soul-utterance : 
 
 For mastery — despair, wrath, shame, remorse, 
 Contended, in each petrifying glance ; 
 
 And still their contest burning sustenance 
 Drew evermore from the consuming blaze 
 Within : — ‘ My being’s ceaseless heritance 
 * Is agony !’ — seemed written in that gaze, 
 
 In letters not a universe of joy could raze : 
 
 XXX. 
 
 It was a look unique in wretchedness : 
 
 Such as, in land of penance, could be worn 
 By none but him who, in his heart’s excess 
 Of ill, his gust for guilt, engrained, inborn, 
 
 Betrayed to shameful death, and vilest scorn 
 Of butchering priests, the Being who only sought 
 To bless mankind and die ! The look of lorn 
 Remediless woe with which that face was fraught 
 Needed no speech to tell — it marked Iscariot. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 The guilty spirit knew that he was known : 
 
 So livingly the soul made manifest 
 
 Her inmost workings, in that visioned zone. — 
 
 And who art thou? — the spirit of unrest 
 Exclaimed, — that hither com’st on prying quest 
 To view Perdition’s Son P Let the dark sign 
 Of thy self-murder, which these shades unblest 
 Sternly reveal, restrain thy thought malign : 
 
 How know’st thou my soul’s deed more criminal than thine P 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 89 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Worship to Him my treason brought to shame 
 Thou talk’st of rendering, did he here display 
 His power and love, — feigning to shift the blame 
 Of thy foul unbelief — (thy words bewray 
 Thy atheist heart !) — on Him who bears high sway 
 Above, and, in the chequered roll of time, 
 
 Allots each paltry worm his little day. 
 
 Avaunt— -dissembler ! Distant age and clime 
 Excuse not unbelief: ’tis the soul’s self-spawned crime ! 
 
 XXXIII, 
 
 Depart, proud unbeliever ! Let suffice 
 That thou hast spied the Traitor : now thine eye 
 Fix on thine own earth-stains : plan new device 
 Elsewhere, thy heart with doubt to petrify 
 Tenfold, — but stay not here ! No sceptic spy 
 Shall bide with me : my desolateness I’ll share 
 With none: these blasting shores, — the howling cry 
 Of this wild lake, are my companions ! Dare 
 Not thou to offer fellowship with my despair! 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 He ceased, a while ; but I no vigour felt 
 To utter speech, or flee. As if a spell 
 Flowed from the spirit’s eyes, and, entering, dwelt 
 Within my being’s fenceless citadel, 
 
 I stood transfix!, and terror-frore ! Rebel 
 Against this silent helplessness, or break 
 The spell of dread, I could not; though, to tell 
 My heart unto the fallen one, with ache 
 Unutterable, I yearned ! Again, Iscariot spake : 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Dost still delay ? Fear’st thou to go alone ? 
 
 Take with thee, then, from out my serpent cave, 
 
 For company, yon fallen minion ! 
 
 Come, — hear him, in his guilt-struck madness, rave, 
 And cry he cannot the fierce scorn outbrave 
 Of all he meets in Hell! — though in Earth’s life, 
 
 He outfaced cursings dread, until they clave 
 Unto his coward soul ; and, now, the, strife 
 Of condign woe within, his face doth hieroglyph. 
 
90 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 xxxvi. 
 
 Come, see if thou canst read ! Thy frozen isle 
 He lately fled. Belike of brotherhood, 
 
 The memory, may revive this thing of guile — 
 
 This viper fell, that drained his country’s blood, 
 
 And then let out his own ! From his low mood 
 Of infantile despair thy form may serve 
 This cast-off* sleuth-hound of the craven brood 
 To rouse, once more. Follow ! — if thou hast nerve 
 Of soul to look on horror, nor from courage swerve ! 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 I followed: for, albeit the spell of dread 
 Forbade my utterance still, — desire prevailed, 
 
 And power returned, to move. The spirit led 
 Where sterner horrors my rapt soul assailed : 
 
 Crowds of huge snakes their coils innum’rous trailed, 
 Forming a labyrinthine cave, vast volve 
 On volve, with scales impenetrable mailed, 
 
 All seeming fierce the mandate to dissolve 
 That held them there their mighty folds to circumvolve. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 How achingly their eyes, amidst their wrath, 
 
 Large pain expressed, and how my fear was blent 
 With sympathetic pain, as on that path, 
 
 Encompassed, thick, with torturous coils, I went, 
 Life’s waking wave with Sleep’s stream confluent 
 Can never from my beating brain efface : 
 
 Designed for deepest treason’s chastisement 
 That cavern seemed : goal for sin’s fiercest race : 
 
 The bourne for Guilt too foul its footsteps to retrace ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 A livid, baleful light the serpents clothed, 
 
 Or seemed to issue forth each burning throat 
 The monsters ever shewed. The frayed soul loathed 
 Her vision, with such shuddering horror fraught, 
 
 And prayed for gloom. At length, Iscariot raught 
 A space circled with snakes in deathly’ array 
 Upreared, pointing with forked tongues, where smote 
 His breast, as on the rocky floor he lay 
 In speechless agony — the suicide of Cray ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 91 
 
 XL. 
 
 Arise, and see how curl thy brother snakes 
 Around thee! — cried the tortured Hebrew ghost: — 
 Look on the torment which at length o’ertakes 
 The perjured traitor on that cursed coast 
 He ploughed Life’s sea to find! Vile viper! lost, 
 Abhorred ! driven forth of all in Hell’s own realm ! 
 Arise, I say, nor lie thus torn and tossed, — 
 
 Tyrant, who swayed a triple nation’s helm, [whelm ! 
 Erewhile, and mocked while suffering did the land o’er- 
 
 XLI. 
 
 By mortal images her dread describe 
 Cannot the waking mind, recalling, sad, 
 
 That dream, and memory of each horrid gibe 
 
 Iscariot uttered, as if wildly glad 
 
 To vent his rage, and pain to superadd 
 
 Unto his fellow’s pain ! Rackt, speechless, prone, 
 
 While his curved spine the huge snakes cupola’d, 
 
 And venom’d anger from their eyes outshone, — [one. 
 O’er whelmed, soul-numbed with woe, remained the prostrate 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Will no taunt rouse Hibernia’s fallen child, — 
 
 Her cut-throat and his own ? Judas resumed; 
 
 And swift, the snakes, the prone form leaving, coiled 
 Around the Jew their frightful folds, and fumed 
 More wildly as he raged : — What hath be-rheumed 
 Thy courage, mighty parasite P On earth 
 A prince ! With worm-worn monarchs catacombed ! 
 How, after all thy greatness, can this dearth 
 Of pride enshroud thee ? Wilt thou wake old Hell to mirth ? 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Vile pandar to the pomp-blown, lust-swoln Guelph ; 
 Rise, I adjure thee, and betake thee hence ! 
 
 I will be fellow to Hell’s inmost self, 
 
 Rather than unto thee, trickster prepense, 
 
 And double-dealer in each mean pretence 
 For forging fetters to thy fatherland ! 
 
 Her champion — first ; and then — true subsequence 
 Of falsehood — tool, her slavery that planned, 
 
 And for his guilty wages stretched his guilty hand ! 
 
92 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Traitor, that sold his country for a price, 
 
 And then 
 
 Traitor ! the prostrate shape outburst ;— 
 
 A price ! Did / my Master, with device 
 
 Of a false kiss betray, to foes athirst 
 
 For his most precious blood, my heart endorsed, 
 
 The while, with settlement of black receipt — 
 
 The thirty silver pieces ? 
 
 Snake accurst ! 
 
 Retorted Judas, — think not here to cheat 
 Thy soul : my deed was foretold by the Paraclete ! 
 
 XLV. 
 
 The Comforter on earth I never knew — 
 
 But here I know Him ! ’Tis my soul’s support 
 That He, who did of old the seers endue 
 With mystic foresight, hath my being begirt 
 With deep assurance that, though long the sport 
 Of these strange tortures, yet, the hour will come 
 When my freed spirit shall her strength exert, 
 
 And wing her way to that bright happy home 
 Where joys, for sinners purged of stain, perpetual, bloom ! 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 My crime, in verity, belongs not me ; 
 
 And, therefore, penance, endless, cannot claim 
 Me hers. I am the child of Destiny! 
 
 But thou — thou self-stained thing of scorn and shame ! 
 Thou torturer of millions ! whose foul aim, 
 
 Self-moved, self-nurtured, w r as thyself to steep 
 In crime, thy kind in tears — enduring blame 
 Thyself must bear; and o’er thy soul shall sweep 
 The tempest of His wrath — -relentless, ceaseless, deep ! 
 
 XLVI i. 
 
 Speak’st thou of destiny, base Jewish churl ! 
 
 Fiercely the tortured, maddened minion cried, — 
 
 And sprang erect ; for, now, the tempest-whirl 
 Of bygone lunes the fall’n liberticide 
 Revisited, and puffed with fumes of pride, 
 
 As erst in mortal life : — Of destiny 
 
 Talk’st thou? — he wildly said; — Think’st thou to hide 
 
 Thy old arch-treason, thus? How, then, may I, 
 
 Much more, by Fate’s behests, my life-deeds justify ? 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 93 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Was I not beckoned, in my climbing path, 
 
 By beaming visions supernatural P 
 Shall I the sentence of eternal wrath 
 Acknowledge just — since dreams, prophetica 
 Of what I should be, — did my will enthral, — 
 
 And bright angelic shapes, in gems and gold 
 Bediademm’d, with voice celestial, 
 
 Nightly, me bade to grasp with seizure bold 
 The prize, in Fate’s weird book, for Castlereagh enroll’d — 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Hah ! utter not thy name — that synonym 
 Of Villany !— exclaimed the self-destroyed 
 Betrayer of the Blest ; — it doth dedim 
 Darkness itself to utter it ! ‘Avoid 
 ‘That sound accurst !’ — the souls in air upbuoyed, 
 
 New come from Earth, in dismall’st accents, yell : 
 
 ‘ Forbear that guilty name to tell !’ — the void 
 Waste shore and caves re-echo. Serpent fell, 
 
 I charge thee, utter not again that hatedname, in Hell ! 
 
 L. 
 
 Elate still reared Cray’s suicide, enwrapt 
 In old life-dreams, — the soul’s habiliment 
 Of morrice-pomp, for holidays adapt 
 At change and full of moon, on earth. He lent 
 No audience to this chiding ; but, intent 
 On telling his pride’s dreams, began to spume, 
 
 And struggle after phrase grandiloquent, — 
 
 The soul’s old habitude, — wherewith t’ exhume 
 His moon-struck visions vain from memory’s pictured 
 
 ’Twas in my manhood’s youth, — he proudly said ; [1] 
 
 I tarried, for one night, fast by the wave 
 Atlantic, where, in lovely verdure spread, 
 
 Old Erin laughs to hear the north-wind rave. 
 
 The hall that welcomed me was old, but brave 
 And stately stood, as stands the forest oak 
 After five hundred autumn tempests' have 
 Against his stalwart arms their fury broke, 
 
 And, eke, five hundred times stripped of his kingly cloak. 
 
94 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII. 
 
 The sun was sinking in the gorgeous west, 
 
 As I drew near. The dark-hued ivy hung 
 Its graceful tendrils, like a bridal vest, 
 
 Around the aged walls, — while softly sung 
 The minstrel evening breeze, with wanton tongue, 
 
 That castle’s marriage to King Time. Bedight 
 With rainbow tints the clouds resplendent flung 
 On me, on towers, and leaves, — for magic sprite 
 Fit bower that seemed; and I some wand’ring love-spelled 
 
 [knight. 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Around my steed the giddy flittermouse 
 Sported, in whimsical ellipse, and passed, 
 
 On leathern sails, with haste to tell his spouse, — 
 
 Hung, wizard-wise, by heels, in chimney vast, — 
 
 While listed him the owl, that sage dynast 
 Of ruin, — that a stranger marked by Fate 
 For princely fortunes was approaching fast 
 The moat, and soon beneath the old arched gate 
 Would bend, where, hoarsely croaking, the dark corven 
 
 [sate — 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Forbear, poor palterer, thy crazy tale 
 Of bats and owls and ravens ! — cried the fierce 
 And fallen Jew ; — Think of the bitter bale 
 Which doth in Hell thy doating soul amerce 
 For mortal sins ! Let tortures real disperse 
 Thy lingering dreams of mock beatitude ! 
 
 For pity sheer, I’ll list thee misrehearse 
 Thy ditty; but in strain at least, subdued 
 To common-sense, this false apocalypse conclude ! 
 
 LV. 
 
 My host received his guest as well beseemed 
 The lordly tenant of this feudal tower ; — 
 
 In vein ornate the patricide rethemed 
 
 His air-built pride : — His child, a peerless flower 
 
 Of loveliness, her eyes a brighter dower 
 
 Than myriad pearls, drooped o’er her father’s arm, 
 
 As droops a lily, after evening shower, 
 
 Upon its parent stem. Soft, chaste alarm 
 Her light-veiled bosom told with undulating charm. 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 95 
 
 LVI. 
 
 Full lowly bowed the reverend seneschal, 
 
 Girdled for state, with massive silver key, 
 
 As on we passed into the banquet-hall : 
 
 And, niched, among the antique carvery 
 The hinds were seen on meekly bended knee, 
 
 With perfumed cressets : evermore there met 
 The ravished ear, from unseen minstrelsy, 
 
 Hushed dulcet tones of harp and flageolette 
 Blent with rapt chaunt of madrigal and canzonette. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 With festal revelry the banquet rang, 
 
 Till tusk and antler, spear and hauberk shook, 
 
 Around the baron’s hall. Anon, upsprang 
 The younger guests : his ladye-love each took : 
 
 The dovelets blushed, and yielded, with coy look : 
 Then thrilled the rebecks, while the merry dance 
 Sped on, — until, for mirth and wine, forsook 
 Their dizzy sport the youngsters, — still, askaunce, 
 Eyeing each other, in their love’s exuberance. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 ’Twas midnight : and, before they said ‘ farewell !’ 
 
 The revellers asked a boon of harper gray, — 
 
 Who dipped his beard in the gold Rhenish bell 
 With youthful zeal, — that he for them should say, 
 Unto his harp’s loud chime, a roundelay 
 Of olden days, in Tara’s hall once told, 
 
 When high O’Connor sat in proud array 
 Of crowned regality, and Erin old, 
 
 From sea to sea, with joy, bowed to the warrior bold. [2] 
 
 LIX. 
 
 I cannot to thine ear the deeds recount 
 Of old Milesian chieftains, a stern line, 
 
 The Minstrel sang : in mem’ry’s transient fount 
 So many streams of weal and bale combine, 
 
 Through life, — and then the soul her anodyne 
 Inevitable’ of death must taste, — and now 
 We drink this bitter cup in Hell’s confine, — 
 
 That the mind shrinks, as if from mortal throe, 
 
 Her total journey, like a drudge, to overgo. 
 
96 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 Suffice it that I say that aged man 
 Wound up his lay with patriotic tears ; 
 
 While my heart raged, as if a hurricane 
 Of joys, its current, with alternate fears, 
 
 Had swoln. I felt distraught as one who hears 
 Himself poean’d for victory ungained 
 As yet, but certain to be won, though years 
 Of hate before he reach the laurel stained 
 With blood be his: that victory’s fruit — his country chained 
 
 LXI. 
 
 With taper dim, through vault and thick-ribbed arch, 
 Six aged hinds, to light me to my sleep 
 Stept gravely on, as if in funeral march. 
 
 But, when alone, how my cold skin did creep 
 To see grim eyes upon me scowl and peep 
 From out the oaken pannels round my couch ! 
 
 One painted warrior looked as he would leap 
 And crush me, for a foreign scaramouch, — 
 
 Such frowning hatred did his portraiture avouch ! 
 
 LXI i. 
 
 Plumed like a hearse, a lordly canopy 
 Adorned my bed, in old baronial mode, 
 
 Its cumbrous velvet folds on ebony 
 Supported, and their drooping festooned load 
 Burthened with gold and jet. Breathless, I glode 
 Into my downy nest, in darkness, while 
 My throbbing heart ’gan thickly to forbode 
 Some unknown ill ; but struggling, I this pile 
 Of spectrous fears threw off, as fancies infantile. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Sleep fled; and soon the gray-haired harper’s song 
 Filled all my chamber, like a serenade 
 Which some benign enchantment did prolong 
 Until so heavenly melody it made 
 That Darkness hasted to her nether shade, 
 
 And Light held sceptre in that resting-place 
 Of ancient pomp. O’erjoyed, and yet afraid, 
 
 I gazed around — when lo ! a form of grace, 
 
 Haloed with glorious light, revealed its radiant face ! 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 97 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 .Resting my arm upon my silken pillow, 
 
 But helplessly recumbent as a child, 
 
 I lay, and gazed, while, like the heaving billow, 
 
 My bosom swelled ; yet, though with wonder wild 
 
 My hair stood up, serene, that angel mild 
 
 Stood pointing to a seat nigh to a throne 
 
 Limn’d all in light, and, with high meaning, smiled — 
 
 A moment — and that visioned form had flown ; 
 
 But woke my soul — like warrior’s at the clarion ! 
 
 LXV. 
 
 4 Fame — fame !’ — shouted my burning, bounding heart, 
 Until my tongue made vocal its excess : 
 
 4 1 will enact the splendid afterpart 
 4 Of life bpgun — this visioned beauteousness, — 
 
 4 This minstrelsy divine, — alike, confess 
 4 My destiny appoints ! They shall not weave 
 4 For me, in vain, that fair viceregal dress — 
 
 4 The Fatal Sisters three ! My soul shall cleave 
 4 Unto its toil — until it doth the palm achieve !’ 
 
 LX VI. 
 
 Next morn, unto my grave and lordly host 
 I did these visions of the night reveal. 
 
 With deeply troubled look his breast he crossed, 
 
 And spake these words: 4 Thy lips, I charge thee, seal 
 4 Upon this theme, if that thou wishest weal 
 4 To thine own soul : for signal woe or joy 
 4 Upon thy rest these midnight visions steal : 
 
 4 High destiny is thine, if thou destroy 
 4 It not — thyself ! Know, —thou hast seen the Radiant Boy !’ 
 
 LXV1I. 
 
 What followed on these visitations bright 
 
 Enough ! — the Palestinian suicide 
 Exclaimed : — If longer ravings to indite 
 Thou dost attempt, these serpents that deride 
 Thy tale already, sequel to such pride 
 Run mad will bring with heavy emphasis. 
 
 What followed ? — why, thy guilty heart was dyed 
 With blood : thy Land, for very cowardice, 
 
 Thou didst not stain — except to shorten thy life’s lease ! 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXVIII. 
 
 What followed? — Thou art here ! — Thy race of guib, 
 And pride and madness is, on earth, outrun ; 
 
 By thine own hand thy life’s vile current spilt, 
 
 And Hell’s eternal agony begun ; 
 
 Yet seek’st thou, like a lunatic buffoon, 
 
 To mock thyself and others with the dreams 
 That haunt the brains of each mere child o’th* moon, 
 Beneath his natal star’s pale borrowed beams 
 Sleeping, ’mid ruins gray, — or lost, by haunted streams. 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 The Radiant Boy — forsooth ! Some doating fool, 
 Possessed with superstitious wonderment, 
 
 And barbarous pride of fancied elvish rule 
 Sway’d o’er his barbarous house, — a ready vent 
 Found in thy crazy ear for lunes uppent 
 Too long within his heated mind. How long 
 Wilt mock thyself? For ever thou art rent 
 From peace; and, on thy soul, with tortures strong, 
 The poor’s Avenger recompenseth, now, their wrong ! 
 
 LXX. 
 
 I tell thee, fierce one ! — that this radiant form — 
 Cried the fall’n lunatic, — again I saw, 
 
 While sitting in the senate ; there, no swarm 
 The moon could raise of vaporous fancies raw 
 To juggle and mislead my brain. What law 
 Of mind hast thou discovered, in this crypt 
 Of horrors, that can warrant thee to draw 
 Hope for thyself from old prophetic script — 
 
 And yet to slay my soul with Fate’s strong shield equipt 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Shall I, — of mental liberty bereft 
 
 In life; — my will, Mind’s pilot, all enthralled; 
 
 The soul’s frail bark herself to fury left 
 Of these tempestuous visions swift upcalled 
 Without her own intent ; — shall I, appalled 
 With fear of justice, from His sentence shrink ? 
 
 The weakest worm on earth that ever crawled 
 Would not, thus impulsed even to the brink 
 Of life, consent to its own curse, and, yielding, sink. — 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 99 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Whether thy soul to its own curse consent, 
 
 Or ape the rebel, — said Iscariot, — 
 
 That curse waits not thy blind arbitrament : 
 
 ’Tis fixt — with mine : in vain we seek to blot 
 The sentence from His book : our fatal lot 
 Is cast, — and must be borne. Thou hadst thy tide 
 Of sanity : if, then, her antidote 
 The sober soul, industrious, had applied 
 To thy disease, she would have purged this crazy pride. 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Thou know’st this true : then, cease thy heart to chafe 
 With these ill-masked deceits. My soul dislodge 
 From bulwark which Jehovah doth vouchsafe 
 Thou canst not. Good from Evil the Great Judge 
 Produceth : not delirious subterfuge 
 Is (his. God did appoint my soul to sin : 
 
 Unto His high decree I bow : His drudge 
 1 am : His purpose answered — I shall win 
 My seat in that bright realm where beam the seraphin ! 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Evanished, now, his air of pomp superb, 
 
 And shook with woe, the fallen thing of state : 
 
 His frenzy fled. 
 
 Alas ! how deep reverb 
 
 These shades my curse ! he cried : — in vain I prate 
 Of impulses and dreams, with wish to palliate 
 My conscious guilt : I feel my sentence just ! 
 
 And now, with trust devout, to mitigate 
 My woe, Pll seek : I bow to His august 
 Decree : I, also, in His Providence will trust ! 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Son of Perdition ! — if thou wert by Heaven 
 Designed, mysteriously, a guilty aid 
 Of holy purposes ; if, thus, the leaven 
 Of evils which His universe pervade, 
 
 By His permission, God hath decreed and made 
 A source of blessing ; may not I look up 
 Beyond the cope of this dark, joyless shade, 
 
 For dawn of bliss ? Unto the dregs, if hope 
 Be there, unmurmuring, will 1 drink my bitter cup.-^ — 
 
 H k 
 
100 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Know, humbled tyrant, — though my soul begins 
 Thy miseries to pity, and forget 
 Her own, — spake Judas; — penalty for sins 
 Thou canst not choose but feel : a deep, dark debt 
 Of woe thou hast to pay : for thee doth whet 
 Her torturous beak a vulture more malign 
 Than gnawed the fabled Titan : Conscience yet 
 Must prey upon thee, till thou wail and pine; 
 
 And, still, for ages, must thou feel her fangs condign ! 
 
 LXXVI 1. 
 
 ‘ Unmurm’ring’ — wilt thou drink of Torture’s dregs ? 
 Why, thou hast not the courage of a worm 
 When trouble truly comes : thy spirit begs 
 For ease, ev’n now, while only in its germ 
 Of misery, and ere the countless term 
 Of its desert of pain is, scarce, begun ! 
 
 How wilt thou murmur, then, against the storm 
 Of penal wrath enhanced, and seek to shun 
 Thy cup, — ’plaining the measure doth the brim o’errun ? 
 
 LXXVI 1 1. 
 
 Yet, to the bitter dregs it must be drunk ! 
 
 The Guelph loved fawning ; but in Hell’s domain, 
 
 Thy power of courtier-cozenage is shrunk 
 
 And withered : thou would’st coax, and cant, and feign, 
 
 With torment’s executioner, in vain : — 
 
 Conscience — I mean. Hah ! even now the edge 
 Of her fell tooth is sinking in thee ! Pain 
 Unintermittent, — pain without assuage, — 
 
 That thou must suffer still will be the direful pledge ! 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Thou feel’st thy portion just ; but like a lithe 
 And eager adder ’neath the planted hoof 
 Of forest steed or ox, dost twist and writhe, 
 
 With madd’ning agony. Hah ! how aloof 
 Thou stood’st from mercy, while on earth ! Disproof 
 That millions starved and suffered, thy false tongue 
 Forged, daily : not a tear-drop in behoof 
 Of suffering from thy stony eyes was wrung 
 For one of all the thousands that thy treachery stung ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 101 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Wilt thou deny that there is suffering — now P 
 Now? — while the worm of conscience thou dost feel? 
 Th’ undying worm ? Why, what is the weak woe 
 Thy coward soul can bear, ^though Hell unseal 
 Her quintessence of torture? ’Twill be weal, 
 Compared with aggregate of woe thy heart, 
 Remorseless, wrung from millions whose appeal 
 To Right was vain ! — millions of sires w T hose part 
 Of woe though first, was least : they left an after-smart ! 
 
 LXXXl. 
 
 For w'hom ! For millions of their starveling sons 
 And famished daughters, who still pine and moil 
 By law : mere skin-and-bone automatons ! 
 
 Oh ! serpent ! — how my spirit’s tide doth boil 
 Against such viperousness as thine ! The coil 
 Of mortal life is mine no more : — 1 would 
 It w r ere — but for one day ! How would I toil 
 To lave my hands in some such viper’s blood, — 
 
 And purge my mountain sin — by spilling the vile flood! 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 What breathe ye for, on earth, — such slime-born things ? 
 To suck your brethren’s blood ; and, while ye gorge, 
 Mock your poor victims ! Thy dark revellings 
 In human blood and human tears their verge 
 Have reached ; — but, how it swells — the ocean surge 
 Of tears and blood — thou and thy teacher drew — 
 
 A fresh-born stream — from anguished hearts ! Two. i hi 
 purge 
 
 Cain’s sin and mine, — with patriot brand to hew 
 Into one heart like thine a festive avenue! 
 
 LXXXI1I. 
 
 Hah ! how’ they shouted while thy mangled clay 
 Was borne unto its burial ! — the few men 
 Whom blood of their old fathers, for one day, 
 
 Stirred into more than slaves ! Oh i it was "then — 
 While terror quelled even the iron ken 
 Of thy stern fellow-lizard, w ho his claw 
 Held up, and breathed an idiot ‘ hush !’ — ’twas then 
 Thy waking victims should have filled Death’s maw 
 With the whole vermin brood that human vitals gnaw I 
 
102 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 Thou — ‘also, to His Providence wilt trust !’ 
 
 A hypocrite thou wert, in life ; in death 
 A coward : thou art both, in Hell ! Thy gust 
 For meanest vice fled not with flight of breath : 
 
 Thy soul, escaped from out her pampered sheath, 
 
 Yet hugs her stain ! What wonder, — though the Guelph 
 Oft spat upon thee, — that thou, still, the path 
 Didst keep of fawning? Meanest, vilest elf, 
 
 That ever played the tyrant, — loathe thy’ abortive self! 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Shall I from thee receive this foul rebuke ? — 
 
 Respake the soul-stung, fallen sycophant ; — 
 
 Tamely, fierce gibe and dark contumely brook 
 From one whom all men deem a miscreant, — 
 
 An outcast vile, — and not hurl back each taunt, 
 
 Each withering sneer, wherewith thou seek’st to gall 
 My wound ? Were my whole essence adamant 
 The soul would strive herself to disenthral 
 From force of gibes so fiercely, foully cynical. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 From thine own mouth I will thy heart convict 
 Of its inherent vileness. Thou hast striven 
 With unrelenting malice to afflict 
 My soul ; and thy foul game hath foully thriven, 
 Chiefly by sarcasms ’gainst the prince now riven 
 From all lust linked him with above the grave. 
 
 Suppose thy censure forceful : grant him given 
 A living prey to his heart’s vice — a slave 
 To filth so abject that the worms, which now their brave 
 
 LXXXVI I. 
 
 Carousal hold amidst his putrid clay, 
 
 Find him not more uncleanly than in life : 
 
 Grant that his kingly course affords no trait 
 Of nobleness : that selfishness was rife 
 As lust within him : that his soul a strife 
 Perpetual shewed the trampled human crowd 
 To bruise more vilely still : that while the knife 
 Was at their very throats his scoffs were loud, 
 
 And he could see them bleed and die, — unmoved, unbowed: 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 103 
 
 LXXXVIII. 
 
 Grant that he thirsted but for power to wring 
 From out his subjects’ hearts the last life-drop— 
 
 If it would minister to his revelling 
 One guilty hour : grant that a sot, a fop, 
 
 He was by turns : a blackleg, then — to groupe 
 Of swindlers fugleman ! — becoming, soon, 
 
 The god of earthly gauds, and to the top 
 Of his vain bent fooled on, by each baboon, 
 
 Tinselled with titles, that beheld the holy spoon 
 
 LXXXIX. 1 
 
 Bestow its unctuous virtue on his head, 
 
 And laughed to see the gew-gaw placed thereon, — 
 
 The grown child’s gew-gaw ! — while, in pomp outspread 
 Peers, prostitutes, pimps, prelates, round his throne 
 Knelt blasphemously homaging th’ o*ergrow 7 n 
 Monster of vice, — their grandeur fed, the while, 
 
 With tears of starving thousands ! Grant this known, — 
 And then, — poor, silly JewM — I can but smile 
 To hear thee thus my fallen soul taunt and revile ! 
 
 xc. 
 
 For, if the royal Guelph my mirror 'were — 
 
 Iscariot ! who was thine ? Hah ! how^ thine eye 
 Bespeaks thy heart’s deep shame ! Thy exemplar 
 How worshipful, how holy, and how high 
 In excellence! His beams to purify 
 Thy baseness did that sun of goodness pour 
 Upon thee ; but thy sin was of a dye 
 Too deep-grained — and thy heart, wdthin its core, 
 Worshipped an earthen god, and there his image w T ore. 
 
 xci. 
 
 And thus it w r as in vain that to thy eyes, 
 
 Within thy ears, His deeds and words of love 
 Were present, day by day. Anatomize 
 Thy heart, and thou w T ilt find that slain enwove, 
 Entextured there, ev’n now 7 ! Yea did here move 
 The Blessed One before thee clad in light 
 And loveliness, the vis.ion w 7 ould not prove 
 Sufficient to o’erawe thee, if to sight 
 The silver bait were offered : that thou could’st not slignt ! 
 
104 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XCII. 
 
 Thou art accurst, and justly. Vile and low 
 Were thy desires through life : a groveller base 
 Thou ever wert, and vainly from Hell's woe 
 Thou dreamst to be set free. Hell’s thy own place, 
 Mean barterer ! Unless thou canst erase 
 From out thy sordid nature the low vice 
 Of avarice, dream thou no more of grace ! 
 
 Before thou sitt’st in Jesu’s Paradise, 
 
 Satan shall, re-enthroned in highest heav’n, rejoice ! 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 How can it be, vile Traitor to the Blest ! 
 
 That after-knowledge by thy sinful soul 
 Of God’s foreknowledge can of guilt divest 
 Thy mind ? His knowledge did not thee control 
 Before thy act : it was thy treachery foul, — 
 
 Thy itch for petty pelf, — base, sordid thing! — 
 
 That spiritual leprosy, — which stole 
 Daily, through all thy heart, until its spring 
 Was tainted, and thou fledd’st to bloody bartering! 
 
 xciv. 
 
 Proclaimed He not thy treason while it germed 
 Within thy heart shut up ? yea, ere a word 
 Forth budding from the hell-sown seed confirmed 
 Thy foul intent ? Perditioned, curst, abhorred, 
 
 Thou wast, before thy mother’s womb was stored 
 With embrycn of thy being ! ’Twas decreed 
 Of the Most High — witness His own record ! — 
 
 That thou shouldst breathe solely to do that deed, 
 
 And on thy traitorous soul th’ undying worm should feed ! — 
 
 xcv. 
 
 He spake no more ; for, speechless horror filled 
 His soul to witness how the tortured ghost 
 Of Judas writhed with rage, — and in what wild 
 Distorted folds the scaly monsters tossed 
 Their horrid hugeness, — with the Traitor lost 
 A mystic sympathy evincing ! Hell 
 Seemed Hell indeed, while I upon that coast 
 Beheld those snakes round Judas coil and swell, 
 
 As if to wilder rage his soul they would impel ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 105 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 I trembled as I gazed. But, as I dreamed, 
 
 A wondrous change swift o’er my vision came. 
 
 No more the serpents writhed : no more outgleamed 
 From the Jew’s eyes a wild demoniac flame: 
 
 Calm and subdued, mingling with conscious shame 
 A look of dignity, awhile he stood ; 
 
 And, when he speech resumed, how deep the blame 
 His deed deserved — his Treason ’gainst the Good — 
 Acknowledged ; — and, forthwith, a mystic theme pursued. 
 
 xcvn. 
 
 More, far more than thou say’st, is mine, of guilt, — 
 
 He said : — Deeper, far deeper, is my stain ! 
 
 Not that I count it thus because they spilt 
 The blood of Him I sold : they would have ta’en 
 His precious life had no vile thought of gain 
 E’er prompted me, or others, to betray 
 The Blessed One. What can the wolf restrain 
 From the meek lamb ? — the vulture from his prey ? — 
 How shall the Good have peace, when Wickedness bears 
 
 Who that e’er dared to mock the tyrant’s gaud, — 
 
 The hypocrite’s deceit, — could hope escape 
 From Tyranny, and Avarice, and Fraud ? — 
 
 The demon-trinity knaves still bedrape 
 With pomp and sanctity, till slaves, agape 
 And palsied, see them wolve and victimize 
 The best of human kind, — yea, tamely shape 
 Their coward tongues to praise, when they should rise 
 And hurl to dust the things of pride, and greed, and lies ! 
 
 xcix. 
 
 My stain is deeper than thou know'st to tell. 
 
 Not that I count it thus because I sought 
 For glittering dust His precious life to sell: 
 
 My poverty begat in me that thought, 
 
 When 1 discerned the toils had nearly raught 
 Their aim who laid them for his life. False one ! 
 My spirit’s crime thou foully dost misquote : 
 
 The vision deep within no longer shun : 
 
 Behold thy soul with tide of pelfish love o’errun 
 
106 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 C. 
 
 A sordid thing — thou said’st I was ! Is toy 
 More precious to a child, than gaudy sheen 
 Of baubles was to thee ? Wert thou e’er coy 
 Of silver as the price of blood? With mien 
 Repentant didst thou restitute, and clean 
 Confession make — before thy weasand-stroke, 
 
 As I — be r ore my rope ? Wert thou not keen 
 Of gold and power until thy clutch was broke 
 With o’erstrained struggles to increase thy country’s yoke ? 
 
 ci. 
 
 Oh ! I might limn thy worthless effigy, — 
 
 And with a truthful power, until thy heart 
 Were wrung to its vile core with agony ! 
 
 But the strong tempest leaves me : and the smart 
 Wherewith thy soul would writhe would but impart 
 A kindred woe to mine. A sordid thing !— 
 
 Saidst thou, I was ? Oh how old thoughts upstart 
 At that tyrannic taunt! — old thoughts that wring 
 My soul until they well-nigh back the tempest bring ! 
 
 CII. 
 
 Hah! tortured torturer! — while they moil unfed, 
 
 If poor men sink in vice ; if, ’midst their toil, 
 
 So ill-requited, grovelling thoughts are bred 
 In Labour’s children ; if th’ uncultured soil 
 Of their neglected minds base weeds defile, — 
 
 Whose is the crime ? The trampled toilers’ ? or 
 Their lordlings’ ? — who, while they, as thou, revile 
 And taunt the trampled ones, trample them more ; 
 
 And hug, themselves, the vice they charge their slaves to 
 
 A groveller if I was, charge thine own tribe — 
 The titled plunderers — with the guilt! or make 
 Them share the censure with the knavish scribe 
 And canting Pharisee ! Each did partake 
 The spoils of my hard toil upon the lake ; 
 
 But, while they feasted, left me to misfare 
 With hunger, cold, and tempest, or the ache 
 Of oft -impending death : disdaining care 
 Whether L did the brute’s or human nature wear! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 107 
 
 civ. 
 
 Unto their Judge I leave them ! He will mete 
 Their sentence with the measure just, of woe, 
 
 As now He measures thine. Forbear deceit, 
 Henceforth : thy guilt, in making grovellers low, 
 Exceeds my guilt in grovelling. Lowly bow 
 In shame, till it be interpenetrant 
 Through all thy crimeful soul. My stain, I know, 
 Is deep ; no more of guiltlessness I vaunt : 
 
 That boast were vain for Hell’s self-exiled habitant. 
 
 cv. 
 
 Ay, ’twas the sun of goodness on me shone : 
 
 Goodness unmeasured, undescribed, untold : 
 
 Goodness that strove its godlike benison 
 To pour, alike, upon the ingrate cold 
 As on the hearts its mercies manifold 
 Made dance with thankfulness : Goodness unfelt, 
 Unwitnessed, unconceived, in mortal mould, 
 
 Before : Goodness that from its treasure dealt 
 So bounteously, as if it would the wide world melt 
 
 cvi. 
 
 Into a sea of bliss, and deluge heart 
 Of man with joy ! Goodness that wept with those 
 Whom grief constrained to weep : Goodness the smart 
 In human bosoms torn by earthly throes 
 That strove to medicate with love ; to close 
 The spirit’s wounds with tenderness ; and heal 
 The mind bruised with the burthen of its woes : 
 Goodness that glowed with inexhaustless zeal 
 To spread, enhance, perfect, eternize human weal ! 
 
 CV1I. 
 
 And I, amidst His radiance of love. 
 
 Was dark and frozen still ! Curst be my doom 
 To all eternity ! Never above 
 May I behold that slighted One ! My gloom 
 The heavenly beam of mercy failed to’ illume 
 On earth ; and I deserve not now to find 
 The love I slighted then. If, to consume 
 My soul, Hell’s stores of torments were combined — 
 Too lightly, even then, had Heaven my curse assigned 
 
108 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CVII I* 
 
 Ten thousand hells hath merited — my sin 
 Against Ineffable Goodness ! — How I rave 
 Amid my madness ! Remedy akin 
 To the disease were tortures that deprave 
 Still more the spiritual health : in torment’s wave 
 Were the soul steeped for ever, her guilt’s grain 
 Would only be more fixed : who scourge the slave 
 On earth, but nurture, by his galling pain, 
 
 The rebel will they would by chastisement restrain. 
 
 cix. 
 
 Great Judge of men and angels, ’tis not thus 
 Thou governestl though 1, in th’ Hell I sought, 
 
 Like fools on earth, such censure libellous 
 Have oft pronounced upon thy rule, and thought 
 My folly wisdom ! Human crime is caught 
 In fatal net of its own consequence : 
 
 Afflict Thou dost not : though our minds, mistaught, 
 Oft represent Thy vast omnipotence 
 Bending to scourge poor worms for waywardness prepense 
 
 cx. 
 
 For waywardness that in the dust to crawl 
 Inclines, beyond the track Thy wisdom hath 
 Appointed. — Spirit, though Hell’s shades enthral 
 Our being, we are not of vengeful wrath 
 The victims, — but have found, by self-made path, 
 The suffering we pursued — of choice : not force. 
 Evil, remedial of itself, — by death, 
 
 Pain, suffering, grief, repentance, shame, remorse, — 
 God hath appointed : Evil, breathes not endless curse. 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Evil, for means of richest, greatest good 
 The uncontrolled Controller hath devised : 
 
 Such His peculiar scheme. O wnat a flood, 
 
 Of beatific light hath now baptised 
 
 Me ! Being’s discord shall be harmonized — 
 
 For Woe, throughout all space, shall be destroyed. 
 Goodness Ineffable denaturalized 
 Would be, — Jehovah’s Deity be void, — 
 
 Unless from gain His universe were purified. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 109 
 
 CXII. 
 
 Spirit, — rejoice, ev’n though the gnawing worm 
 Enter thine inmost essence, and pain pierce 
 Thy being to the core ! Maugre this storm 
 Of torture, we shall reach repose: this fierce 
 Consuming woe shall end; the Universe 
 Shall be, through endless ages, resonant 
 With voices tuned by joy : Love shall rehearse 
 The Maker’s wisdom, and His creatures chaunt, 
 Blissful, the everlasting chorus jubilant! 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 Why, — how I rave again ! — with visage changed 
 The spirit called of old ‘ Perdition’s Son’ 
 
 Exclaimed : — Is not my tortured soul estranged 
 From happiness ? Do I not hate mine own 
 Existence ? — for annihilation groan, — 
 
 And hate all that partake this life unblest P 
 Leave me, foul sprite, to my despair alone ! 
 
 Dost thou not know that sceptered ghosts make quest 
 For fawning things that will their robbers’ right attest ? 
 
 cxiv. 
 
 Such errand to my cavern, late, did bring 
 Old gray Achitophel — the cast-off tool 
 Of royalty, who, still, like thee, doth cling 
 To tyrants, though they spurn him. Kingly rule 
 Grows problematical : on earth, the dull 
 Tame slaves of toil sullenly fold their hands, 
 
 Dreaming to starve their lords : Hell’s self is full 
 Of rebel thoughts ’gainst Thrones : brood of brigands 
 Quake ’mid their pictured pomps : their dread thy zeal 
 
 [demands. 
 
 cxv. 
 
 Haste, minion, to recruit the minished host 
 
 Of their defenders — thou who didst so well 
 
 Subserve their pride on earth ! Never more boast 
 
 Of boundless loyalty, if thus rebel 
 
 Thy fears ’gainst duty, till resolve they quell. 
 
 Hah ! pangs of shame thy spirit paralyze ! 
 
 Thy dread is just— Outcast of earth and hell ! 
 
 Hell’s Thrones, to scout thee, would indignant rise, 
 Did thv craven guilt-smit image recognize! 
 
in 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 Base spawn of fear and guilt, — get hence, and cage 
 Thy lunacy in some dark desert nook 
 Where none may hear thee curse, and spume, and rage — 
 For curse thou shalt ! — Hence ! — and again invoke 
 The Radiant Boy ! — 
 
 Cease, hellish fiend, to mock 
 My tortures ! cried the fallen minion, stung, 
 
 Anew to madness : — Lo ! thy gibes have woke, 
 
 Again that form ! — but Hell’s dark clime hath flung 
 Strange horror o’er that brow that beamed so fair and young 
 cxvn. 
 
 Hah ! false, deluding phantom, — now I see 
 Thou wert a minister of Hell to beck 
 Me to destruction ! — Jew ! why thus at me 
 Glarest thou, wonder-struck, and seem’st to seek 
 Vainly, the object of my fear ? Apeak 
 Among thy snakes, he sits : behold him there ! 
 
 View’st not his frown ? — dost thou not hear him speak P 
 Off, Radiant fiend ! I know thee, now ! Forbear 
 To taunt my soul with crime for which thou spread’st the 
 
 [snare ! 
 
 cxvni. 
 
 Thou liest, foul sprite ! — the guilt of Emmett’s blood 
 Belongs not me : they counselled him who fled 
 When brave Fitzgerald fell : joined with his mood 
 Of rashness, this to hopeless stiuggle led 
 That gallant boy ! Fiend, urge it not ! — the thread 
 Of Fate in his own hands he took ; to woo 
 The daughter of the golden-tongued, instead 
 Of flight, chose danger [3] — and the tiger crew 
 Of Power, with vengeful fangs, upon his own life drew ! 
 
 cxix. 
 
 Foul spirit, mock me not ! — thou dost but tempt 
 My soul to deeper crime ! — 
 
 False minion, hold ! 
 
 Iscariot cried ; — this region is exempt [sold 
 
 From Earth’s old dreams : nought seest thou ; but hast 
 Thyself to falsehood till thy heart is bold 
 To forge wild frauds ev’n here ! — 
 
 Curst Judas, cease 
 
 Thy taunts ! — 4 1 come’ it saith, — 4 thy heaven t’unfold — 
 4 Thy ancient heav’n — the haggard, thought-worn face 
 4 Of Pitt : that thou mayst dream old dreams of power and 
 
 [place !’ 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 ill 
 
 cxx. 
 
 Perditioned Jew ! — seest not the portraiture 
 The fiend hath raised ? List what he saith ! — * Now view 
 4 The magic eye, once more, which cleft th’ obscure 
 4 Opaque of thy dull clay, — his fit tool knew, — 
 
 4 Accepted thy meek offers to eschew 
 4 Rash, youthful promises, — and cheered with smiles, 
 
 4 Prurient with place, the recreant to pursue 
 4 His snaky course of patricide ! Recoils 
 4 Thy spirit from such vision of its patriot toils ? 
 
 cxxi. 
 
 4 Dost think it would recal the withering sneers 
 4 Of Ponsonby, or Grattan’s lightning glance, 
 
 4 Till thou wouldst quail with sense of ancient fears ? 
 
 4 Courage ! thou thing of cut-throat puissance ! 
 
 4 What of their sarcasm’s empty fulminance ? 
 
 4 Thou wast a victor — ’spite of all their gibes ! 
 
 4 Thy country’s suicide was won ! Perchance 
 4 Thy own for smallest sin Hibernia’s tribes 
 * ill count — the hosts thou sold’st to Pitt for traitor bribes l 9 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 Vile Jew ! why dost thou scoff with hellish glee ? 
 
 Hark ( ’tis the Fiend, again — 4 Would’st gaze 
 4 On Brandreth’s gory head ? — I’ll bring it thee, 
 
 4 Fresh reeking from the scaffold, with the glaze 
 4 Of death still in its eyes ! Hah ! thou shalt craze 
 4 With joy, gloating thy fill upon that throat — 
 
 4 The mangled throat of Thistlewood ! Pourtrays 
 4 It thy own wound ? Stifle the troublous thought, — 
 
 4 And once, again, upon thy spy-trapped victim gloat !’ 
 
 cxxni. 
 
 The Fiend’s fierce eyes — how gleefully and fell 
 They glister — like the eyes of Earth’s vile things 
 That hunt for blood ! Again it saith 4 How well 
 4 The eyes of Castles and their glisterings, — 
 
 4 Edwards* and Oliver’s, — o’er traffickings 
 4 Of blood for gold — thou dost remember ! Start 
 4 Not now ; — for, swift, thy Radiant angel’s w r ings 
 4 Shall toil to bring — that thou mayst mock its smart 
 W ith life’s o.d relish — Caroline’s lorn broken heart [ 
 
PURGATORY 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 * Gloat, — gloat thy fill upon each torturous pang ! 
 
 ‘ Dost shrink ? Courage ! — they were her dying moans ! 
 
 * The music thickens : — *tis the sabres’ clang 
 
 * Mingles with shrieks ; — and, now, a peal of groans 
 
 ‘ Comes up from Peterloo ! What, though the stones 
 
 * Would rise and curse, were thy vile image there ? — 
 
 ‘ Thou shalt have joy in listening to the tones, 
 
 ‘ Renewed in Hell, of Hunger’s loud despair! 
 
 1 Hark ! what wild choir breaks forth in anthem debonair? 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 ‘ Behold — thy Radiant angel hath called up 
 1 Thy bread-taxed victims, in their lank array ; 
 
 * And with the hunger-bitten weavers’ troop, 
 
 ‘ Thy fatherland’s crushed children leave decay ! 
 
 * All rise — and hymn thy glorious deed at Cray !’ — 
 Hell-Fiend, avaunt 1 — 
 
 And, forth, the minion fled — 
 Shrieking with horrid madness ! Me, dismay 
 And terror woke; and, from soul-quelling dread 
 Set free, 1 blessed the morn, upon my prison-bed. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 [1] Stanza 51. — “ ’Twas in my manhood’s youth, — he proudly 
 said — Mine is but a poetical version of the suicide states- 
 man’s vision : here follows the prose — from Winslow’s “ Ana- 
 tomy of Suicide” (published 1840) pp. 242-4. — “ It is now more 
 than thirty-five years ago that the following singular circum- 
 stance occurred to the Marquis of Londonderry : He was on 
 a visit to a gentleman in the north of Ireland. The mansion 
 was such a one as spectres are fabled to inhabit. The apart- 
 ment, also, which was appropriated to his lordship, was 
 calculated to foster such a tone of feeling from its antique 
 character; from the dark and richly-carved panels of its 
 wainscot ; from its yawning chimney, looking like the en- 
 trance to a tomb ; from the portraits of grim men and 
 women arrayed in orderly procession along the walls, and 
 scowling a contemptuous enmity against the degenerate 
 invader of their gloomy bowers and venerable halls ; and 
 from the vast, dusky, ponderous, and complicated draperies 
 that concealed the windows, and hung with the gloomy gran- 
 deur of funeral trappings about the hearse-like piece of furni- 
 ture that was destined for his bed. Lord Londonderry ex- 
 amined his chamber ; he made himself acquainted with the 
 forms and faces of the ancient possessors of the mansion as 
 they sat upright in the ebony frames to receive his saluta- 
 tion ; and then, after dismissing his valet, he retired to bed. 
 His candle had not long been extinguished, when he per- 
 ceived a light gleaming on the draperies of the lofty canopy 
 over his head. Conscious that there was no fire in his grate ; 
 that the curtains were closed ; that the chamber had been in 
 perfect darkness but a few minutes previously, he supposed 
 S 
 
114 NOTES TO BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 that some intruder must have entered into his apartment ; 
 and, turning round hastily to the side from whence the light 
 proceeded, he, to his infinite astonishment, saw not the form 
 of any human visitor, but the figure of a fair boy surrounded 
 by a halo of glory. The spirit stood at some distance from 
 his bed. Certain that his own faculties were not deceiving 
 him, but suspecting he might be imposed on by the in- 
 genuity of some of the numerous guests who were then 
 inmates of the castle, Lord Londonderry advanced towards 
 the figure ; it retreated before him ; as be advanced the 
 apparition retired, until it entered the gloomy arch of the 
 capacious chimney, and then sunk into the earth. Lord Lon- 
 donderry returned to his bed, but not to rest ; his mind was 
 harassed by the consideration of the extraordinary event 
 which had occurred to him. Was it real, or the effect of an 
 excited imagination ? The mystery was not so easily solved. 
 
 “He lesolved in the mornin to make no allusion to what 
 had occurred the previous night, until he had watched care- 
 fully the faces of all the family, to discover whether any 
 deception had been practised. When the guests assembled 
 at breakfast, his lordship searched in vain for those latent 
 smiles, those conscious looks, that silent communication be- 
 tween parties, by which the authors and abettors of such 
 domestic conspiracies are generally betrayed. Everything 
 apparently proceeded in its ordinary course ; the conversa- 
 tion was animated and uninterrupted, and no indication was 
 given that any one present had been engaged in the trick. 
 At last, the hero of the tale found himself compelled to 
 narrate the singular event of the preceding night. He re- 
 lated every particular connected with the appearance of the 
 spectre. It excite i much interest among the auditors, and 
 various were the explanations offered. At last, the gentle- 
 man who owned the castle interrupted the various surmises 
 by observing that ‘the circumstance which had just been 
 recounted must naturally appear very extraordinary to those 
 who had not been inmates long t the castle, and were not 
 conversant with the legends of his family then, turning to 
 Lord Londonderry , he said, ‘ You have seen the Radiant 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE THIRD. 
 
 115 
 
 Boy. Be content ; it is an omen of prosperous fortunes. I 
 would rather that this subject should not again be men- 
 tioned.’ 
 
 “ This was no doubt an hallucination of the senses. On 
 another occasion, when in the House of Commons, Lord 
 Castlereagh fancied he saw the same c Radiant Boy.’ Does 
 not this fact establish that his lordship’s senses were not 
 always in a healthy condition. It is possible that when im- 
 pelled to suicide he laboured under some mental delu- 
 sion.” 
 
 [2] Stanza 58. — Roderick O’Connor, king of Connaught, — 
 who, finally, surrendered his title of “ Lord of all Ireland,” 
 to our Henry II. — seems, from Leland’s account, to have 
 been the last monarch of the ancient Irish race who held a 
 national assembly at Tara : it is described as “ a numerous 
 and magnificent convention of the states, in which his gran- 
 deur and authority were so strikingly displayed, that the 
 ancient honours of his country seemed to revive, at the very " 
 moment when all such expectations were on the point of 
 being utterly extinguished.” 
 
 [3] Stanza 118. — The love of the unfortunate and noble- 
 minded Robert Emmett for the daughter of Curran, is well 
 known to have been the cause of his delay to quit Ireland 
 after the failure of the insurrection in which he was engaged j 
 the delay, of course, led to his apprehension and death. 
 
 3 
 
PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 I. 
 
 Welcome, sweet Robin ! welcome, cheerful one ■ 
 
 Why dost thou slight the merry fields of corn, 
 
 The sounds of human joy, the plenty strown 
 From Autumn’s teeming lap; and, at gray morn, 
 
 Ere the sun wakes, sing to the things of scorn 
 And infamy and want and sadness whom 
 Their stronger fellow-criminals have torn 
 From freedom and the gladsome light of home, 
 
 To quench the nobler spark within, in dungeon’d gloom 
 
 n. 
 
 Why dost thou choose, throughout the live-long dav 
 A prison-rampart for thy perch, and sing 
 As thou wouldst rend thy fragile throat ? Away, 
 
 My little friend, away, upon light wing, 
 
 A while ! Me it will cheer, imagining 
 Till thou revisit this my drear sojourn, 
 
 How, on the margent of some silver spring 
 Mantled with golden lilies, thou dost turn 
 Thy pretty head awry, so meaningly, and yearn, 
 
 in. 
 
 From out that beaming look, to know what thougnts 
 Within the barb-leaved hart’s-tongue dwell — [l] 
 
 The .purple eye petalled with snow, that floats 
 So gracefully. Dost think the damosel, 
 
 Young Hope, kirtled with Chastity, there fell 
 Into the stream, and grew a flower so fair P 
 Ah ! still thou linger’st, while I, dreaming, tell 
 Of pleasures I would reap, if free 1 were, 
 
 Like thee, to breathe sweet Freedom’s balmy air. 
 
118 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Away ! — for this is not a clime for thee — 
 
 Sweet childhood’s sacred one ! The hawthorns bend 
 With ruddy fruitage : tiny troops, with glee 
 Plundering the mellow wealth, a shout will send 
 Aloft, if they behold their feathered friend, 
 
 Loved ‘ Robin Redbreast/ mingle with their joy ! 
 Did they not watch thy tenderlings, and wend 
 With eager steps, when school was o’er, a coy 
 And wistful peep to take — lest some rude ruffian boy, 
 
 v. 
 
 With sacrilegious heart and hand, should rob 
 Thy nest as heathenly as if ‘ Heaven’s bird’ 
 
 Were not more sacred than the vulgar mob 
 
 Of pies and crows ? Flee, — loved one ! — thou hast heard 
 
 This dissonance of bolts and bars that gird 
 
 Old England’s modern slaves, until thy sense 
 
 Of freedom’s music will be sepulchred. 
 
 Hie where young hearts gush taintless joy intense, 
 And, ’mid their rapture, pour thy heart’s mellifluence J 
 
 VI. 
 
 Still linger’st thou upon that dreary wall 
 Which bars, so enviously, my view of grove 
 And stream and hill, as if it were death’s pall ? 
 
 O leave this tyrant-hold, and, joyous, rove — 
 
 Loved bird of home — Bird of our fathers’ love — 
 Where the thatched cottage, clad with virgin rose 
 And sweet-brier and rosemary, thickly wove 
 Among vine-leaves, with nectared garland woos 
 The amorous bees that, songful, do their love-sweets spouse. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Hasten, dear Robin ! — for the aged dame 
 Calls thee to gather up the honeyed crumb 
 She scatters at her door ; and, at thy name, 
 
 The youngsters crowd to see their favourite come. 
 
 Fear not Grimalkin! — she doth sing ‘ three-thrum/ [2] 
 With happy half-shut eyes, upon the warm 
 Soft cushion in the corner-chair : deaf, dumb, 
 
 And toothless lies old Growler : — fear no harm, 
 
 Loved Robin ! — thou shalt banquet hold without alarm. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 119 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Ah ! Chanticleer hath eyed the dainties spread 
 For thee, and summons his pert train the prize 
 To share. Lo ! how the children ask with dread, 
 Of the old grandame with the glazed eyes, 
 
 * Why Robin does not come ?’ The pet one cries, 
 Because he sees thee not, — unpacified, 
 
 Ev’n with the apple tinct with vermeil dyes, 
 
 The first-born offers with a kiss ! Abide 
 Not here, expected one, lest woe the cot betide ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 If thou return not, Gammer o’er her pail 
 Will sing in sorrow, ’neath the brinded cow, 
 
 And Gaffer sigh over his nut-brown ale ; 
 
 While evermore the petlings, with sad brow, 
 
 Will look for thee upon the holly bough, 
 
 Where thou didst chirp thy signal note, ere on 
 The lowly grunsel [3] thou didst light, and shew, 
 
 With such sweet confidence, — thou darling one! — 
 
 Thy blythesome face, — and, on thee, all cried 1 benison !’ 
 
 x. 
 
 Alas ! — I mind me why thou linger’st here ! 
 
 My country’s happy cottages abound 
 No longer. Where they stood and smiled, uprear 
 The ‘ Bastile’ and the gaol! — and thou hast found 
 Such refuge, Robin, as, — upon the ground 
 Where Alfred reigned, and Hampden fought and bled, 
 Where Milton sung, and Latimer was crowned 
 With glorious martydom, — is portioned 
 Unto our fathers’ sons, who win with tears their bread. 
 
 xi. 
 
 Bread ! — nay devour with greed the grovelling root, 
 As recompense of labour for their lords; 
 
 Or, spurned, when begging to have, like the brute, 
 Fodder for toil, and coerced into hordes 
 Of midnight spoilers, swell the black records 
 Of cruelty and crime. ‘ This dear dear land’ [4] 
 
 Is dear no longer: its great name affords 
 Thoughts but for curses! Ay, where the brave band 
 Sang in the flames — lit by the brood of Hildeorand ; 
 
120 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Where strode the iron men of Runnymede, 
 
 And quelled the tyrant ; where burns memory 
 How lawless Falseness, sprung of royal seed 
 And sceptred, paid stern forfeit by decree 
 Of broad-day justice unto Liberty ; 
 
 Where noblest deeds were done ; upon this isle — 
 
 4 This precious stone set in the silver sea’ [5] 
 
 Men talk of England as of something vile ; 
 
 And wish they could forget her, in some far exile ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The cottage babes were mourning, did I say, 
 
 For that the threshold their loved visitant 
 Presented not ? Alas, poor bird ! Thy lay 
 And all its sweetness is forgot : their want 
 Of bread hath banished thoughts of Robin’s chaunt ; 
 The children plenty know no more; and Love 
 And Gentleness have fled from Hunger’s haunt : 
 
 Fled is all worship for fair things that rove 
 Among fair flowers — worship in young hearts sweetly wove. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Fair Nature charms not: fellowship with song 
 And beauty, — germs from which grow, for the good 
 Deep reverence, and for the frail, though wrong, 
 
 Pity and tenderness : — all these, the rude 
 Chill breath of Want hath stifled in the bud; 
 
 And beggar-quarrels for their scanty crust 
 Now fill the bosoms of the lean, dwarfed brood, 
 
 The peasant father — sprung from sires robust — 
 Beholds at home, and wishes he were laid in dust ! 
 
 xv. 
 
 Ah ! darling Robin, thou wilt soon behold 
 No homes for poor men on old England’s shore: 
 
 No homes but the vile gaol, or viler fold 
 Reared by new rule to herd the 4 surplus poor’ — 
 
 Wise rule which unto Pauperism’s foul core — 
 
 The rich man’s purse-plague’s core — shall penetrate : 
 Paupers shall multiply their race no more 
 Except they live in palaces ! Debate 
 Upon the rule they may: but, — the slaves bear their fate ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 121 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Slaves, — abject, bloodless, soulless, sneaking slaves ! 
 Your fetters are perfected, now ! Tug, strain, 
 
 Toil, sweat, and starve, and die ! For, whoso raves 
 For larger pittance from his lords humane, — 
 
 Or, malcontent, dares from hard toil refrain, — 
 
 He shall be Bastiled! His wise lords say well — 
 
 Such grumbling slaves might nurture bold disdain 
 In their serf-offspring : better ’tis to quell, 
 
 At once, and, in the germ, creatures that might rebel ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Cowards, — why did ye suffer knaves to forge 
 These eunuch-fetters ? — why so tamely don 
 These chains ? — 
 
 Beshrew this rising in my gorge 
 To think that others ’neath their fetters groan, 
 
 And do not break them ! — Wear I not my own ? 
 
 Ay, and must wear them, while my tyrants choose. 
 
 Well : let me bide my time; and, then, atone 
 For that real crime — the failing to arouse 
 Slaves against tyrants. I may, yet, before life’s close. 
 
 XVI II. 
 
 The sun has faded. Robin, ’tis full time 
 Thou fledd’st to covert: cease thy song, and hie 
 Away to rest ! — but let me hear thy chime 
 Renewed to-morrow ; for home’s minstrelsy 
 Is precious ’mid these bars. Robin, good-bye ! 
 
 ’Twas Childhood’s farewell ; and I cannot yield 
 This heart to bitterness so utterly, 
 
 But that the sense of fondness, now upsealed 
 Therein, will struggle till its pulses be revealed. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Once more resounds the hateful clank of bars 
 And bolts: once more I gain my narrow lair. 
 
 Of bondage-life new-fangledness ne’er mars 
 The drear perfection : Morrow is the heir 
 Legitimate of dull To-day; and where 
 Yesterday gazed upon the chill damp wall 
 And yawned, To-day looks on with the same air 
 Of listlessness. Food, sight, sound, converse pall: 
 Only the fountains of the dead well spiritual 
 
122 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Waters that purify the stagnant mind 
 From morbid loathings that would madness breed, 
 Amid this sickening slough of unrefined 
 And vulgar circumstance. 
 
 My spirit, freed 
 
 From matter, seemed on enterprise to speed, 
 
 Once more, across Death’s gloomful ocean wave; 
 
 And raught the shore where penance is decreed 
 To souls forsaking, with presumption brave, 
 
 Their clay ere Nature’s sentence lays it in the grave. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The sculptured aisle — the dome — were quickly gained, 
 And past. And now, a feeling and a sense, 
 
 Or, what were likest sense and feeling, reigned 
 Throughout my being of a power intense 
 To summon up the soul’s experience, 
 
 And view, as in a mirror, her whole course 
 Of consciousness : filled with this opulence 
 Of intellective might, unto each source 
 Of mortal joy the mind recurred, with mystic force. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Her reminiscence seemed so full and clear, 
 
 Of pleasures past, so consolably viewed 
 She Life’s young worships pure, that Hades’ sphere 
 Grew gladly bright, and the dread clime seemed hued 
 Like vernal earth. Childhood’s sweet fields renewed, 
 With daisies and with king-cups gay begemmed, 
 
 I saw : then Lindsey’s sweetest sanctitude 
 Of Druid woods arose, where, giant-stemmed, 
 Upreared old trees anew with verdure diademmed. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Cirqued with his offspring stood the central oak 
 Of myriad years, throwing each glorious bough 
 Abroad as bravely as when music broke 
 The solitudes while there his parent grew, 
 
 And ‘ derry-down !’ was sung, and mistletoe 
 Was gathered by the bearded hierophant, [6] 
 
 And troops of primal men their eagled foe 
 Fierce staggered, chased the bison to his haunt, 
 
 And slew, in his own den, the wolf so grim and gaunt. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 123 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Along mazed paths beloved of those old trees 
 I seemed to walk ’mong flowers all faery-frail, 
 Azure-robed harebells, chaste anemones, 
 
 Primroses wan, and lilies of the vale, 
 
 Each bud so beauteous that speech would fail 
 To say how lovely ’twas : for, gushing tears 
 Of ecstasy can only tell the tale, 
 
 Unto some kindred heart that Nature cheers 
 As rapturously, how fair are flowers of childhood’s years I 
 
 XXV. 
 
 And melody awoke of sweet wood-lark 
 
 And mellow-throated blackbird : sibilance 
 
 Of thousand tiny things, each like a spark 
 
 Of gold or emerald, its radiance 
 
 Amid the noonbeam sporting ; utterance 
 
 Of love’s soft throbbings by the stockdove coy ; 
 
 Shrill minstrelsy of throstles ; puissance 
 Of sylvan harmonies with flood of joy 
 The heart seeming to deluge, and its sense o’ercloy. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 And still the land was Hades, and the soul 
 Lived consciously discerpt from her clay shrine, 
 
 And viewed through plenitude of her control 
 Over the past, in mirror chrystalline, 
 
 Life’s joys; nay, seemed her essence to entwine 
 With them until again she lived them o’er. — 
 
 The harping of an unseen hand divine 
 Now woke carols of courtly troubadour, 
 
 Till the old forest echoed with proud songs of yore : 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Lays that with fluttering bosom many a maid 
 Of southern clime oft listed from some high 
 And envious turret, — rapturous serenade 
 Of glowing love, mingled with bitter sigh 
 And passionate upbraiding, breathed to die 
 Upon the breeze. Anon a strain upsent 
 That unseen harp, shrill as when cleaves the sky 
 The battle-trumpet : gorgeous tournament 
 The harper sang, and shock of knights armipotent: 
 
124 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Of prancing steeds, and terrible mel£e, 
 
 And dancing plumes, he told: of high proclaim 
 By pageant herald; victor-garland gay 
 Bestowed with peerless blush of maiden shame, 
 Revealing peerless maiden’s conscious flame ; 
 
 Of honours by spectator kings conferred ; 
 
 And royal mandate that the conqueror’s fame 
 Be borne through Christendom, — yea, to the beard 
 Of the swart Soldan, ’mid his sweltering turbanned herd ; 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 A stately burthen, couched in antique tongue 
 And magic rhyme, unto his mystic shell 
 With tuneful voice, the unseen minstrel sung. 
 
 But suddenly, his lofty harpings fell 
 To dirge-like melody ; for smit by spell 
 Of memory, the bard his heartless foil 
 On earth, and breath of hope hushed by the knell 
 Of early death, sung sadly. Dull recoil 
 His harp seized, next, as if it shrunk from overtoil. 
 
 xxx. 
 
 The sorrow-broken songster, soon, to wake 
 Its chords in wailful cavatina strove : [7] 
 
 He sung of the proud, slighted bosom’s ache, 
 
 Of soul-consuming fires more fierce than love 
 Or jealousy, of restless hopes that move 
 Their young possessor to aspirings wild, 
 
 Of disappointment’s gall when frowns disprove 
 His smiling day-dreams, till the draught defiled — 
 
 The deathly chalice — tempts the scorn-stung Poet-child ! 
 
 xxxi. 
 
 Sobbings, that heaved as they would rend the heart, 
 Succeeded, and the lyre was dumb ! Then passed 
 The shade of fated Chatterton athwart 
 My path, — sad, mournful, slow, with eyes downcast, 
 And visage ye might emblem by a waste 
 Of over-prurience, or tropic field 
 Where luscious fruitage springing thick and fast 
 Expires of hasty ripeness, ere can yield 
 To th’ taste its sweets or their rich value be revealed.-; — 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 125 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 The shade evanished from my eager gaze, — 
 
 Seeking, with haste of heart-galled misanthrope, 
 Some dark secluded nook of forest-maze. 
 
 And, now, came o’er my spirit a grim troop 
 Of self-accusing thoughts, swift summoned up 
 By Memory, who, again, with mystic might 
 Seemed high endowed. How oft, in youth, the dup 
 I, also, was, of dreams, — and misused flight 
 Of years, — she sternly pictured to my humbled sight. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 To manhood, reached before the dreams of youth 
 Were half relinquished, passed my bodiless 
 Being, and seemed to sigh, where oft, in truth, 
 
 The waking heart had sighed, deep blamefulness 
 Of indolence beholding, — pride’s excess, — 
 
 And thousand errors although inly mourned 
 Still followed. Then a love-look of distress 
 Was pictured, telling how one bosom yearned 
 To bless me, as if still the soul on earth sojourned. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Anon, a change came o’er my dream. Disposed 
 In stately length, a twilight avenue 
 Of trees funebrous suddenly disclosed 
 I saw, — where the tall cypress, ancient yew, 
 
 Dark pine, and spreading cedar, as by due 
 Observance of nice art, like colonnade 
 Of desert Tadmor, [8] were arranged, and grew 
 A solemn vista clothed with musing shade — 
 
 Such as the rapt soul’s holiest retrospect might aid. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A monumental form, that meekly glowed 
 With softest radiance, sadly o’er an urn 
 Sepulchral, ’neath a lofty cypress, bowed, 
 
 Midway, along this sombrous pathway. Lorn 
 It droop’d, and, voiceless, seemed to tell ‘ I mourn 
 ‘With more than mortal grief;’ yet, was such grace 
 Celestial by that drooping statue worn, 
 
 That one desired for ever in that place 
 To stay and gaze upon its spiritual face. 
 
126 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Enrapt to ecstasy, I gazed till life 
 Began to fill its breast, and passion shone 
 Through its unmarbled eyes ! Death a vain strife 
 Essayed, with chilly grasp around her zone, 
 
 To hold in sculptured grief that ardent one. 
 
 Lo ! high, immortal Love breathed vital power 
 On her fair limbs, and, with a gentle moan, 
 
 She raised her head — a monument no more 
 Of sorrow — but, for love, a peerless cynosure ! 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Her islet shell the burning Lesbian took 
 From sad repose upon the urn that feigned 
 To hold the image of her grief, and strook 
 The matchless chords as one who pain disdained : 
 
 Then, proudly, though with tears, she thus complained 
 Of slighted tenderness, —vowing to feed 
 Her fruitless flame till, spirit disenchained 
 From torture, her deep constancy its meed 
 Should find in some blest state for souls by gods decreed : — 
 
 xxxvm. 
 
 Phaon ! beloved, unloving Phaon ! thee 
 The maid enamoured hymns, — by pain unchanged 
 In Hades, as by scorn on earth : on me 
 Let angry Jove, the Torturer, be avenged 
 For slighted life, and order disarranged 
 Of his stern government : woe shall not wrest 
 Thy image from its throne : never estranged 
 Shall be her love from Sappho’s faithful breast: 
 
 She can love on— unloved, despised, ache-doomed, unblest ! 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 Ingrate ! I offered thee no vulgar toy, 
 
 No mindless, soulless prize : hadst thou my flame 
 Returned, the passion of a thoughtless boy, 
 
 Compared with mine, were like the lustre tame 
 Of night’s pale worm shewn to the sun-lit gem. 
 
 Cold, undiscerning clay, — thou wast not worth 
 My love ! Alas ! each winged reproach I aim 
 At thee back on my soul recoils with birth 
 Of fond remorse more torturous than woes of earth. 
 
or SUICIDES. 
 
 127 
 
 XL. 
 
 Phaon beloved ! unloving though thou wert, 
 
 My love burns on. and shall all pain survive — 
 
 A deathless flame : my soul lives all-amort 
 By her own nature, since she doth derive 
 Her essence from intenseness, nor can live 
 An atom of her life in meek, cold, calm 
 Indifference. Mystic hopes that in me strive 
 For utterance ! — do ye truly shape the palm 
 I claim, or doth sick Fancy feign the spirit’s balm ? 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Fidelity to Nature’s impulses 
 
 Shall bring, at length, ineffable reward : 
 
 They who, all unsubdued, ’gainst miseries 
 Of scorn and death have waged the combat hard 
 Shall meet their guerdon : dreams of gifted bard 
 And visions of gray seer shall be fulfilled : 
 
 Torture that long the universe hath marred, 
 
 Shall end • of Love and Hate the life-w r ar wild 
 Shall cease : the discords of the soul for aye be skilled. 
 
 XLI 1. 
 
 It cannot be that with the Beautiful 
 Deformity shall ever, envious, blend : 
 
 Mercy divine, shall demon Wrath annul, 
 
 Love conquer Hate, and glorious Goodness bend 
 Her iris over life till she transcend 
 The power of Evil, and annihilate 
 Its sting for ever! — 
 
 Ardent Lesbian, end 
 Thy dreams, nor dare Futurity and Fate 
 To fix, by thy fond wish, in fancied happy state !— 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Thus broke upon my spirit accents stern, 
 
 Haughty, abrupt; and, forthwith, stood beside 
 Sappho’s soft form a spirit cold and dern 
 Of aspect, but whose stately, seemly pride 
 Outspoke the tuneful Roman suicide 
 Who wooed the Muse to leave her wonted hill, 
 
 And tread the plain with philosophic stride, — * 
 
 And, slighting toys, with manly themes to fill 
 The soul — of its own Liberty, Fate Good, and 111. [9] 
 
128 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Dispel these sanguine dreams ! — the proud bard said : 
 Passion, — warm maid, — hath seized the heritance 
 Of Reason in thee : proof hath Nature spread 
 That strong Necessity rules wide expanse 
 Of Universe : primeval atoms Chance 
 May have assorted ; but, once joined, ’tis vain 
 To dream a separation. Partial glance 
 On Nature renders thy warm essence fain 
 To witness unmixed Good begin its ceaseless reign : 
 
 XLV. 
 
 But, know, the Universe is perfect, since 
 Eternal Destiny forbade all germs 
 Diverse from what exist. Let it convince 
 Short-sighted murmurers at the mingled swarms 
 Of being, that all which is — is best, though storms 
 And darkness, death and havoc, mix with peace 
 And radiance, life and love ; since each conforms 
 To high Necessity. Let passion cease, 
 
 Lesbian, to dazzle thee with fraudful garishness. — 
 
 XLVI . 
 
 So spake Lucretius ; but, with look undimmed 
 Of intellectual ardour, Sappho thus 
 Rethemed her yearning thought : — 
 
 Guesses sublimed 
 
 By doubt, rather than argument abstruse 
 And wise, thou utter’st, O incredulous 
 Epicurean ! Failing to foreknow 
 The future, and with haste incurious 
 Glancing at past and present, thou art slow 
 To mark how Nature doth her bright intents foreshow. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Weakly, not wisely, Mind doth refuge take 
 In greater mystery from less : though faith 
 In government of kindly gods forsake 
 The soul full oft, beholding pain and death 
 Of fairest things endowed with lease of breath, — 
 
 Yet seems it blind procedure to conclude 
 Our puzzled survey with a word that saith 
 The gods are helpless as ourselves, and feud 
 Of Good with Evil hath by law of Fate ensued : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 129 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Fate, or Necessity : Bard, what is this 
 
 But Ign’rance veiled in simulance of words ? 
 
 Nature’s strange strife must be — because it is ; 
 
 Or, is — because it must be : dull discords 
 Of reason I If its help, indeed, affords 
 No sager explications of the cause 
 Of things, sterile its rules my soul regards, 
 
 And cleaves to Phantasy, from which she draws 
 Faith more ennobling to interpret Nature’s laws. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The soul loathes Pain, Deformity, Decay : 
 
 Nature hath made them loathsome to her sense : 
 Therefore, they shall not always be. Bard, say, 
 What proves this truthless ? Wordy eloquence 
 Of doubt compriseth all the proof from wnence 
 Thou dost affirm Necessity; and why 
 Should spirits slight the cheering evidence 
 Of their own sympathies with Nature’s high 
 Proclaim, to embrace clouds of dull dubiety ?• — 
 
 l. 
 
 The sanguine Lesbian ceased ; and thus replied 
 The philosophic bard : — 
 
 Couldst thou efface 
 
 My doubts, — rapt, tuneful one, — to list thee chide 
 With this sweet earnestness and winning grace [10] 
 Long season would I yield. A resting-place 
 My spirit yearns to find within the veil 
 Of Truth — but yearns in vain. We still but chase 
 Shadows, and evermore the substance fail 
 To find, of Truth : our clearest light is mystical. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Deformity and discord war with fair 
 And lovely shapes throughout the universe : 
 
 What wonder, then, if gifted spirits share 
 This wishful trust — that Good shall 111 disperse 
 Victorious, yet P I own, ’tis not through fierce 
 Impetuous desire, but by innate 
 Devotion to the Beautiful — to hearse 
 All pain in joy — woe, wrong, to’ annihilate — 
 
 Thy essence, Lesbian, builds this happy after-state : 
 9 K 
 
130 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 L II. 
 
 It is the native yearning of the Mind : 
 
 The soul attuned to harmony and love 
 Longs from the chains of discord to unbind 
 All thought and being. Yet, I view, enwove 
 Through Nature, laws by which all things commove 
 Despite our choice, misnamed, — or joy or woe 
 Of sentient creatures : laws it doth behove 
 High Powers to conserve, lest men below, 
 
 Judging them null, should cease within their fanes to bow. 
 
 L1II. 
 
 Or, if uncaused the Universe exists — 
 
 Mystery beyond the plummet of our thought ! — 
 
 Who, then, shall sperse the dark eternal mists 
 That veil all being P — who break the irksome knot 
 With which Necessity binds fast the lot 
 Of every sensuous thing — exposed to death, 
 
 And pain, and hate ? — who cancel the huge blot 
 Of suffering from life ? The shadow fleeth 
 Of Truth ! Spirits, — we wander in a mystic path ! 
 
 LIV. 
 
 How know we whether it be fair and good 
 
 And godlike to desire plenipotence 
 
 Of love, whereby to pour a bounteous flood 
 
 Upon the universe, and fill all sense 
 
 And thought with joy, — or, whether vehemence 
 
 Of folly be the fitter name whereby 
 
 To note our wish ? Unknowing indigence — 
 
 With all our toil — beggars the soul : we try 
 In vain to grasp Truth’s substance : all is phantasy ! 
 
 LV. 
 
 If it were fair and good to bless all thought 
 And life with joy, why was not Nature clad 
 In never-changing smiles from birth ? why fraught 
 For ages thus, her life with suffering sad, 
 
 With pain and agony ? Will Evil add, 
 
 By mystic providence, unto the sum 
 Of everlasting Good ? What rapture glad 
 Would fill the soul, what blest delirium 
 Of joy, could she burst through the veil that hides her doom 
 
OP SUICIDES 
 
 131 
 
 LVI. 
 
 But all is doubt, and dark : we struggle on 
 Like limed birds : still captive, but the strife 
 Maintain, in trust that freedom shall be won : 
 
 How vain may prove our trust ! Spirits, what if 
 Our ignorance have misnamed the hues of Life — 
 
 Evil and Good ? From whence, then, shall we earn 
 Knowledge to unknow our strange errors ? Rife 
 With mystery all — ay, all appears ; and yearn 
 For ever, vainly may the soul pure Truth to learn ! 
 
 LVI i. 
 
 Lucretius ceased : and dark debate and doubt 
 Brooded on brows of many a habitant 
 Of that strange clime who now, in wondering rout 
 Listed the theme. 
 
 Spiritual pursuivant 
 Or herald ghost, meanwhile, with ministrant 
 Aspect approached ; and him thus greet the crowd : — 
 Hail bard who didst the world-waged victory chaunt 
 Of Caesar and Pharsalia ! message-browed 
 Thy visage seems: we listen: thy full thoughts unshroud ! — 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 High-gifted spirits of self-exiled land, — 
 
 Replied the soul of Lucan ; — Minds, that erst 
 On earth caught inspiration from the grand 
 And beautiful in Nature, and conversed 
 With her Divinity until she nursed 
 Within ye thoughts and forms of glorious might 
 And loveliness, — which in their fulness burst 
 Upon the world suffusing Man with bright 
 Ecstatic visions of the reign of Truth and Right, — 
 
 LIX. 
 
 I come with embassage from high divan 
 Of spirits who on earth held sceptred sway 
 Or civic honour. Deep debate began 
 Their essences, of late, if throned-array 
 And pomps, in Hades, ceaseless :>tate pourtray 
 Of monarchy on earth, — or phantoms build 
 Their regal seats, and mythic shapes display 
 Lessons of change, that dynasts unbeguiled 
 May be, of pride which hath, perchance, their souls defiled : 
 
132 
 
 THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 LX. 
 
 Exalted Hellene spirits challenge proof 
 Of natural kingship ; while a haughty host 
 Of Thrones contend, beneath cerulean roof, 
 
 For ceaseless rule of princes. To their coast 
 The court of sceptred suicides each ghost 
 Inviteth of your king-soulled lineage, 
 
 That ye the quest may aid which long hath tossed 
 Hades in doubt ; and blissful heritage 
 Of Truth spirits may win. Ye have my embassage. 
 
 LX I. 
 
 We come, — we come! — with rapturous minstrelsy 
 Of many a mystic harp the Poet-choir 
 Respond : — we come to join the jubilee 
 Of thought ! The true-born children of the lyre 
 High emprise of the soul can never tire. 
 
 To guage the depths of doubt 5 the heights to scale 
 Of phantasy ; the strength of passion’s fire 
 To prove ; to labour on, though footsteps fail 
 Of Mind in Mystery’s path ; our essence shall not quail' 
 
 LXII. 
 
 To dare to think — our rightful attribute 
 
 We claim. What though we vainly thread the maze 
 
 Of thought ? Ours be the banquet of dispute — 
 
 The feast of argument. And if the ways 
 Of dark Necessity still shun our gaze — 
 
 Better in vain to search, than irk and pine 
 In low ignoble sloth ! 
 
 Receding rays 
 
 Shed the rapt choir. From Phantasy’s confine 
 Slowly crept back the soul unto her clayey shrine. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FOURTH 
 
 [1] Stanza 3. — “ The barb-leaved hart's- tongue.” I find 
 that I have mis-named the Arrow-head, or Sagittaria sagittifolia 
 of Linnaeus. The plant is common in Lincolnshire streams ; 
 and we were wont to call it the hart’s tongue. It is, says 
 Sowerby (voL ii. p.84), “one of the most beautiful orna- 
 ments of our rivers, pools, and ditches, throughout England. 
 Its flowers are short-lived, the petals soon falling off ; but 
 there is a succession of them through the months of July and 
 August.” 
 
 [2] Stanza 7. — “ Three-thrum,” the purr of the cat when 
 pleased. I give the word by which it is described in old 
 Lincolnshire ; but know not whether it be common to the 
 peasantry of other districts. 
 
 [3] Stanza 9. — “ Grunsel” or ground-sill, a word common 
 in Lindsey, and other districts, for threshold . Milton has 
 made it classical, in his description of Dagon, 
 
 * Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark 
 
 * Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off 
 
 * In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, 
 
 ‘ Where he fell flat and shamed his worshippers.* 
 
 Parad. Lost, Book 1, vv. 458 — 46). 
 
 [4] and [5] Stanzas 11 and 12. — “This dear, dear land,” 
 &c. — Dying speech of Gaunt. — Shakspere, Rich. II. Act 2. 
 
 [6] Stanza 23. — “Derry-down.” I read, somewhere, when 
 a boy, that these words, so well known as the burthen of an 
 old song, had descended to us from the Druids, with whom they 
 
134 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 made part of the chorus sung as they went to gather misletoe 
 from the oak, at Yule-tide ; but have searched various ety- 
 mologies in the British Museum Library, without being able 
 to furnish the reader with my authority. All that I, at pre- 
 sent, discover is, that derry is understood to signify " the place 
 of oaks.” 
 
 [7] Stanza 30. — " Cavatina.” — A musical term applied to 
 airs of various character ; but, in which there is some repe- 
 tition of the melody. 
 
 [8] Stanza 34. — “ Tadmor” in the wilderness , as it is called 
 in the Old Testament, is understood to be Palmyra. 
 
 [9] Stanza 43. — In an age when all metaphysical poetry is 
 deemed dull and stupid, it would not be easy to create 
 curiosity respecting the contents of the superb poem on 
 “ The Nature of Things,” by Lucretius. Readers of the Latin 
 classics usually regard it as valuable, chiefly for its masterly 
 embodiment of the principles of the Epicurean philosophy ; 
 but Dr. Mason Good (whose splendidly-annotated version, I 
 have seen, for the first time, in the British Museum Library, 
 since liberation), opens his preface with this glowing, and 
 more universal, eulogy of the Roman philosopher-poet : — 
 
 “ There is no poem within the circle of the ancient classics, 
 more entitled to attention, than “ The Nature of Things,” by 
 Titus Lucretius Cams. It unfolds to us the rudiments of 
 that philosophy, which, under the plastic hands of Gassendi 
 and Newton, has, at length, obtained an eternal triumph over 
 every other hypothesis of the Grecian schools ; it is com- 
 posed in language the most captivating and perspicuous that 
 can result from an equal combination of simplicity and polish, 
 is adorned with episodes the most elegant and impressive, 
 and illustrated by all the treasures of natural history. It is 
 the Pierian spring from which Virgil drew his happiest 
 draughts of inspiration ; and constitutes, in point of time, as 
 of excellence, the first didactic poem of antiquity.” 
 
 [10] Stanza 50. — "Sweet earnestness and winning grace/* 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FOURTH. 
 
 135 
 
 I entreat the reader to understand these phrases as an as- 
 cription to Sappho’s real power as a poetess, — not as cha- 
 racteristic of the manner in which I have made her appa- 
 rition discourse. Ancient and modern critics without number 
 — Longinus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Horace himself, 
 Vossius, Hoffman, Addison, &c., &c., have paid the highest 
 tribute to the poetical excellence of the fair suicide of Lesbos ; 
 but, perhaps, a more finished and eloquent eulogy on her lyric 
 worth is not to be found in the compass of a few words, than 
 in the following extract from the 9th vol. of the Encyclopedia, 
 Metropolitana : — 
 
 “ There are few intellectual treasures, the loss of which is 
 more deeply to be regretted than that of the works of this 
 poetess ; for the remnants which have reached us certainly 
 display genius of the highest order ; they are rich even to 
 exuberance, and yet directed by the most exquisite taste. 
 In these most delicious of love-songs the tide of passion 
 seems deep and exhaustless ; it flows rapidly yet gently on, 
 while the most sparkling fancy is ever playing over it ; and 
 the words themselves seem to participate in the sentiments 
 which they develope. It is a mistake to imagine that the 
 fragments of Sappho are nothing more than the eloquent 
 expressions of amatory feeling ; they are really verses of high 
 imagination, which renders them as beautiful as they are 
 intense, and, in the opinion of some writers, raises them even 
 to the sublime.” 
 

 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES, 
 
 BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 Hail eldest Night ! Mother of human fear ! 
 
 Vague solitude where infant Man first felt 
 His native helplessness ! Beneath whose drear 
 And solemn coverture he, trembling, knelt 
 To what in thy vast womb of darkness dwelt 
 Unseen, unknown !— but, with the waking Sun, 
 Shouting, sprang up to see glad Nature melt 
 In smiles, triumphantly his Joy-God run 
 Up the blue sky, and Light’s bright reign again begun f 
 
 ii. 
 
 Hail starless darkness ! — sterile silence hail ! 
 Would that o’er Chaos thy wide rule had been 
 Perpetual, and reptile Man’s birth-wail 
 Had ne’er been heard ; or, over huge, obscene, 
 And monstrous births of ocean or terrene 
 For ever thou hadst brooded ; so that Light 
 Had ne’er mocked mortals, nor the morning sheen 
 Broke thy stern sigil to give baleful sight 
 To Man — whose look upon his fellow is a blight ! 
 
 in. 
 
 Season of sepulchred and secret sin ! 
 
 Beneath thy pall what vileness doth Man hide, 
 From age to age, — the moral Harlequin 
 Who dons the saint to play the fratricide. 
 Villainy’s jubilee! — Crime’s revel-tide ! — 
 
 Whose archives opened would yon judge proclaim 
 More criminal than the thief he lately tried,— 
 
 Yon priest an atheist, — and hold up to shame 
 Myriads of knaves writ * honest’ in the roll of Fame ! 
 
138 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Mute witness of frail beauty's primal wreck ! 
 
 Carnival hour of gray-haired Lechery ! — 
 
 Foul harvest-time of her who sits to beck 
 O’er her cursed threshold yon boy-debauchee, — 
 
 The bawd, all palsy-twitched, whose feignful glee, 
 When he beholds her face upon the morrow, 
 
 With sobered brain, will freeze his jollity 
 To speechless horror, till he fain would borrow 
 Thy veil, once more, to hide his young remorseful sorrow ! 
 
 v. 
 
 High noon of the adulterer who doth ask 
 Of yawning hell to triple thy black hour, 
 
 That he, unshooned, may safely, ’neath thy mask, 
 
 Reach the unfastened, guilt -frequented door, 
 
 And steep his soul in sin unto the core ! 
 
 Mirth-bringer to the thief grown hunger-fell, — 
 
 Who laughs to clutch the miser’s coffered store, 
 
 And, rendered shrewd by law, with smothered yell, 
 Sends the rich shrivelled fool where he no tales can tell ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thou great conspirator with men of blood 
 To curtain murder till the guilty proof 
 In some lone cave or unfrequented wood, 
 
 From man’s short-sighted vigilance aloof, 
 
 Can be earth’d up ! Oh ! if the ebon woof 
 Thou stretchest o’er the land could now be changed 
 Into a mirror, — how the poor dupe’s scoff 
 Would burst upon his teachers seen estranged 
 From rules they taught ! How he would burn to be avenged ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 At base pretensions unto comely worth, 
 
 At foul Hypocrisy’s true features shewn, 
 
 How would the universal curse burst forth ! — 
 
 Hah ! how I doat ! Am I an idiot grown 
 In the dank dungeon P Is not the World known 
 Unto Itself to be a stage of cheats, 
 
 Where, whoso plays with skill, if he depone 
 That each sworn brother-knave’s deceits 
 Are fair, the skilful knave a world-voiced plaudit greets P 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 139 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And, were thy pall, dim Night, asunder torn, 
 
 And ugliest portraits thou conceal’st laid bare, 
 
 For worship men would soon exchange their scorn. 
 With flagrant front do not Day’s vices glare, 
 
 And men that they are virtues sleekly swear ? 
 Darkness ! still hold thy provident control 
 O’er half man’s life, that some thy cloak may w T car 
 To sin with shame : more seemly ’tis than stole 
 Of sanctity that hides, by day, the filthy soul. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Darkness ! thy sceptre still maintain, — for thou 
 Some scanty sleep to England’s slaves dost bring : 
 Leicester’s starved stockingers their misery now 
 Forget ; and Manchester’s pale tenderling — 
 
 The famished factory-child — its suffering 
 A while exchangeth for a pleasant dream ! — 
 
 Dream on, poor infant wretch ! Mammon may wring 
 From out thy tender heart, at the first gleam 
 Of light, the life-drop, and exhaust its feeble stream ! 
 
 x. 
 
 Darkness ! still rule — that the Lancastrian hive 
 Of starveling slaves may bless thee : for ev’n they, 
 With all their wretchedness, desire to live ! — 
 
 Ay, men desire to live — to whom the day 
 Will bring again their woman’s-task — to stay 
 At squalid home, and play the babe’s meek nurse 
 Till sound of factory-bell, when they away 
 Must haste, and hold the suckling to life’s source, 
 Within the rails ! Upon their tyrants be my curse l 
 
 XI. 
 
 Nay, rather light that curse on ye, yourselves, 
 
 Ye timid, crouching crew ! Is there no heart 
 Among ye stung to see the puny elves, 
 
 His children, daily die ; his wife dispart 
 
 Her hair, and glare in madness ? Doth the smart 
 
 Of degradation cease to rankle in your veins ? 
 
 Faint, though ye be, and feeble, will none start 
 Unto his feet, and cry, while aught remains 
 In him of life — ‘ Death ! or deliverance from our chains’ P 
 
140 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Cowards ! do ye believe all men are like 
 Yourselves ? — that craven fear doth paralyze 
 Each English arm until it dares not strike 
 A tyrant ? — that no voice could exorcize 
 Old Tyler’s spirit, and impel to rise 
 Millions omnipotent in vengeful ire P — 
 
 Fool, that I am ! — are there not hungry spies 
 
 On every hand, who watch, for dirty hire, [fire ? 
 
 Each glance of every eye that glows with Freedom's 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Frost ! while I rave in darkness, thou dost feel 
 The sun in yon far southern felon-land; 
 
 But feel’st, therewith, thy chain. Thy wound to heal 
 No help extends ! Poor victim! sold, trepanned 
 By hirelings of the minion whose spite planned 
 Thy death, and built thy gallows, — but, through fear 
 Of Labour’s vengeance, stayed the hangman’s hand ; 
 Victim of thy heart’s thirst with bread to cheer 
 England’s lean artizan, and Cambria’s mountaineer ! [1] 
 
 XIV. 
 
 How many a despicable sordid tool 
 Of tyranny doth flippantly descant 
 Upon thy deed, cleping thee ‘ rebel fool,* 
 
 And gallant Shell a ‘ broil-slain miscreant,’— 
 
 Who, — had your cause and ye proved dominant, 
 
 Would loudly have extolled your fearlessness, 
 
 And boisterously swelled the choral chaunt 
 Filled with the eulogy of your excess 
 Of deep fraternal zeal the suffering world to bless ! [2] 
 
 xv. 
 
 Ellis, my brother ! — though but once in life 
 I clasped thy hand, — for one hour’s troubled breath 
 Heard thy tongue’s accents, — in the dungeon rife 
 With sounds of maddened sorrow, — yet, till death 
 Hearse me in silence, of my plighted faith 
 To thee as to a brother, I will think : — 
 
 And never, — though it bring me direst wrath, — 
 
 That they have wronged thy innocence, will I shrink 
 To tell the’ oppressors whose revenge-cup thou dost drink. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 141 
 
 XVI. 
 
 A perjurer sold thee to the lordling's spite ; 
 
 The lordling's tenant-serfs dared not demur 
 
 The verdict— for they marked his nod, though slight 
 
 How sternly starless did the dread night lour 
 
 On the low minions of tyrannic power 
 
 When they, to exile thee, — the wronged one, — led ! 
 
 'Twas such a night as this ; and grief's heart-shower 
 
 These yielding eyes, in my lone dungeon shed, 
 
 For ’mid the clank of chains, echoed thy farewell tread ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And thou, all guiltless of the violent deed [3] — 
 
 Wherewith they charged thee, as the new-born child ! 
 And he, failing t' entwine the victor's meed 
 With patriotic daring, — deep-despoiled, 
 
 Alike, of the sweet heaven that on ye smiled 
 In your young loveling’s eyes, — your widows frowned 
 Upon by the rude world, — scorn on scorn piled 
 Upon your memories, by each hireling, bound 
 To fawn or bark as he is bid, — like the vile hound ! — 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Despoiled, — perchance, for ever, — of the sweets 
 Of love, peace, hope ! Oh, how your hapless fates, 
 
 Like fearful beacons that the mariner meets 
 Voyaging near whirlpools, tell what danger waits 
 The patriot's steps ! And, whosoe'er debates, 
 
 Within, of loss of ease, enjoyment, wealth ; 
 
 Or, who on circling perils ruminates, — 
 
 Envied, maligned, belied, bereft of health, — [stealth ; 
 Belike of food, — dogged by blood-scenting things of 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Whoso bethinks him that the eager grasp 
 Of foremost friendship's semblance may denote 
 The deeper venom of the darkling asp, 
 
 And that the multitude’s applausive shout 
 May be the prelude their hate; — if doubt 
 And hesitance arrest his fervid pulse, 
 
 And cool it to consistence with due thought 
 For his own offspring ; — if their prattlings dulce 
 Seduce him from resolves that do the soul convulse 
 
142 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 With troubles, contests, perils myriadfold, 
 
 And threatening prospect of a baleful end 
 By the vile halter, — in the dungeon cold, — 
 
 Or on the transport-shore without a friend 
 To sympathise, but hordes of slaves to rend, 
 
 Ev’n in its death-pangs, the lorn exile’s breast, 
 
 With brutal taunts : — Oh ! let him reprehend 
 That knoweth none of these, — but here confest, 
 
 Shall stand my sentence, — while I am a dungeon-guest : 
 
 XXI. 
 
 I reprehend him not, that wisely looks 
 Before he leaps, — and looks again ! — 
 
 Poor slaves ! 
 
 Forgive that hasty curse ! — forgive ! Rebukes 
 From me ye little need, while the rude waves 
 Of suffering overwhelm ye ! Seek your graves 
 In peace ! for ye are hasting thitherward 
 Apace. Why should ye a vain strife ’gainst knaves 
 And tyrants struggle to maintain P Discard 
 All torturous hope : Redemption’s path for you is barred ! 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Drudge on in peace ! Ay, though ye starve, still drudge, 
 Lest from your fondlings ye be torn, to herd 
 With eunuch-paupers ! Tyrants wreck their grudge 
 Not as of old : high lords then massacred 
 The scurvy slaves who insolently dared 
 To murmur : now they wisely take revenge 
 On murmurers like men who have conferred 
 With meek Philosophy ; and mildly change 
 Murder of breathing things for ’annihilation strange 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Of things designed, as they believe, to breathe ! 
 
 And if they do not thus believe, they lie — 
 
 The atheistic hypocrites! To sheathe 
 The sword in ye were barb’rous : ye shall die 
 Humanely slow; and they will meekly try 
 In peace to end ye ! ’Tis the radiant dawn 
 Of Christian Civilization ! Purify 
 The earth they must by sweeping off your spawn— 
 Ev’n as the sun sweeps noxious vapours from the lawn ! 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 143 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Drudge on, in silent meekness! Tamely drag 
 Life’s fardels as ye may : ’twill soon be spent — 
 
 This loan of breath; and they will find some rag 
 To wrap ye in at last ! When ye are blent 
 With other church-yard things — from riches rent 
 And pride — ye will be even with them ! Pine 
 A few more hours ! Your goodly tenement, 
 
 The grave, is near : that fair serene confine 
 Where ye will never hunger while your lordlings dine ! 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Hark ! ’tis Consumption’s hollow cough that rings 
 From yon damp felon-cell ! How dread these vaults 
 Of living Death seem ’mid such echoings 
 At midnight ! What strange doubt the soul assaults, — 
 What frightful boding ! till the heart’s pulse halts, 
 
 As if it were afraid to beat so loud ! — 
 
 Let me to rest ! To-morrow, when the bolts 
 Are drawn, once more, this feeling of the shroud 
 May flee : the spirit be, again, with hope endowed : 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 With hope for Man’s redemption : though a crime 
 It is for prison-thralls of such a hope 
 To breathe ! — 
 
 I slept, and saw, again, the clime 
 Of suicidal souls. One of a troop 
 Of travellers newly come, beneath the cope 
 Sepulchral of the vague, vast, caverned span 
 I stood. Anon, adown an aisle whose slope 
 Invited, on new travel, I began 
 To wend, forth from that region subterranean. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Upon a bleak and barren plain, I dreamed 
 That I emerged, where one tall pillar reared 
 Its height until among the clouds it seemed 
 To end. Yet, ’tw T as but mockery when I neared 
 This lofty wonder — for its top appeared 
 Beneath man’s stature. Low, around the base, 
 
 Lay broken sculptures of great names revered 
 In times of old; but ruin did deface 
 Them till they looked like Memory in her burial-place. 
 
144 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 And then another, and another stone 
 Uprose, in the far distance, — each the aim 
 Vain-glorious of its founders making known 
 More by its wreck than record of the name 
 Or deed it had been stablished to proclaim. 
 
 Food for despondence, thus, the brooding mind 
 (j thered with semblant shapes that fleeting came 
 Athwart its vision : for, as flits the wind, 
 
 These imaged columns fled, or with new forms combined, 
 
 xxix. 
 
 In allegoric lessons for the soul — 
 
 Of Liberty, each marble fragment strewed 
 Upon that plain, each pictured deed and scroll, 
 
 Told, as it lav, and 1 the ruin viewed : 
 
 ‘She is a goddess Man hath oft pursued, — 
 
 * Won seldom, — and hath never yet retained, 
 
 ‘ Her living presence!’ Dreary solitude 
 O’er all 1 saw in saddened vision reigned, 
 
 Until a verdant mound my anxious spirit gained. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 And, on the mound, methought a mystic cirque 
 Of giant stones, in simple grandeur rose, 
 
 Resembling Earth’s first fathers’ handy-work — 
 
 Their temples, or their tombs. Of Freedom’s cause, 
 When Gallia’s sons bound laurel on their brows 
 Blent with the oak, full many a devotee, — 
 
 Self-exiled from the wrath of friends grown foes, — 
 ’Mid that cairn’s shadow seated seemed to be, 
 
 Deep brooding on the Past : a stern confederacy. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Unapprehensive unto their thought 
 My being seemed, as I the cirque surveyed; 
 
 Albeit, so veritably that I mote 
 Not dcubt, sat there each patriotic Sh .de 
 Revealed. Their spiritual brows arrayed 
 In light unearthly seemed; and, soon, to tell 
 His thoughts each form began, while Spirit made 
 Response to Spirit : waking not the swell 
 Of sounds, but voiceless, Mind to Mind seemed voluble. — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 145 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 How long shall poor Humanity lie waste 
 On earth ! — began this mystic utterance 
 Buzot[4], — of La Gironde’s great sons not last 
 In toil" to break the feudal bonds of France : 
 
 How long will Liberty make tarriance, 
 
 Nor haste to bless our race L Brothers, I deem 
 Our agony in this strange occupance 
 Of after-life a far less rueful theme 
 Than thought that Tyranny on earth is still supreme. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Of suffering here I reck not ; since from earth 
 
 Come spirits hither still, that each declare 
 
 Our ancient home enslaved. Who would have mirth 
 
 In after-life while Earth’s poor children wear 
 
 The fetters of the despot, and despair 
 
 To break them P This is woe, — this, this, — to feel 
 
 That all in vain we broke the priestly snare, 
 
 And, with our heart’s blood, did to Freedom seal 
 Fealty ! France, loved France, now feels the iron heel I 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Crushed, hated monarchy, again doth crush 
 Fair France ; mirk superstition again weaves, 
 Sucessfully, her limed web, — ay, flush 
 With life, more than her ancient realm retrieves. 
 
 Soul of Condorcet ! — tell me that misgrieves 
 My spirit, if unto thy thought profound 
 Hope scintillates ; if thy strong vision cleaves 
 The clouded future, and thou view’st unbound 
 Loved France, and Europe quake at her old trumpet-sound. 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 Deep-searching spirit, tell me, did we err — 
 
 Deeming the Palestinian story fraud 
 
 Or dreams, while we ourselves the dreamers were ; 
 
 Deeming Earth’s sceptres a pernicious gaud, 
 
 And dying to defend the banner broad 
 Of Universal Liberty, while meek 
 Obedience unto kings, and reverent laud 
 Our duty was, of Him the fablers sleek 
 
146 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Belike I err, ev’n now, and more involve 
 My being in woe, thus lightly Powers august 
 And solemn naming. Yet, — the strong that wolve 
 The weak ! — the powerful that grind to dust 
 The helpless ! Can I err, yearning to thrust 
 Them from their thrones ! My brother, if the doom 
 Of man be hopeful, tell ! — 
 
 With thought robust 
 And daring, thus the sombre spirit whom 
 Buzot addressed [5] replied, — scorning exordium : 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 The spirit of Prometheus doth but sleep 
 
 Within the human heart, — lulled, drugged, and drowsed, 
 
 By Power’s robed med’ciners who keenly keep 
 
 Watch o’er its breathings, — and have ever choused 
 
 Their prey into more slumber, when aroused 
 
 For a brief breath by Freedom’s vital touch, 
 
 Tt started its sleek keepers, who caroused, 
 
 Gaily, beside their prostrate victim’s couch — 
 
 Thinking it safe, for aye, within their privileged clutch ! 
 
 xxxviii. 
 
 The spirit of Prometheus doth but sleep 
 
 Within man’s heart : the dark, blood-feeding brood 
 
 Of serpents that so hush around it creep, — 
 
 Now they perceive, with apprehension shrewd, 
 
 Their Terror-Trinity of Crown, Sword, Rood, 
 
 Is near evanishment, — may justly dread 
 The ruthless vengeance in its waking mood 
 Of the heart’s Titan thought. Up from its bed 
 ’Twill spring, and crush the asps that on its life misfed ! 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 The spirit of Prometheus doth but sleep : 
 
 The Mind’s tornado wakes, through earth, ev’n now ! 
 And soon it will to nought the fabric sweep, 
 
 Of age-reared Priestcraft, and its shapes of woe, — 
 
 Its Hell, Wrath-God, and Fear — that foulest foe 
 Of human freedom ! ‘ I will freely think !’ — 
 
 ’Twill boldly tell the surpliced cozeners— ‘ Lo ! 
 
 ‘ I dare your monster God ! — nor will I shrink 
 1 His tyrant tortures to defy — ev’n though I sink 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 147 
 
 XL. 
 
 1 Amid the bottomless abyss of pain 
 ‘ Ye say He hath created for his slaves! 
 
 * There let Him hurl me ! — and, despite the chain 
 
 * That spiritually binds me under waves 
 
 ‘ Of liquid flame, He shall find one who braves 
 ‘ His wrath, and hurls back hatred for a God 
 4 Who forms without their will Kis creature?., — graves 
 ‘ Their natures on them, — rules by his own nod 
 Of providence, their lives, — and, then, beneath his rod — 
 
 XLI. 
 
 ‘ His scourge eternal, tortures them, without 
 ‘ Surcease or intermission !’ Endless fire 
 For a breath’s error, — for a moment’s doubt ! 
 
 Infinite Greatness exercising ire 
 
 Relentless on a worm ! Why ? That the quire 
 
 Celestial may His spotless glory sing — 
 
 His attributes harmonious made by dire 
 Infliction on his worms of suffering, — 
 
 And He Himself in joy ecstatic revelling ! 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Oh ! what a potent poison hath benumbed 
 The human mind, and robbed it of its might 
 Inherent ! since — affrighted, cowed, begloomed, 
 
 And stultified, — this juggle of the Night 
 It kneels unto, and calls 4 divinest light’ ! — 
 
 But, it will soon the jugglers’ toils outleap 
 Who long, behind the altar of their Sprite 
 Of blood, have played at terrible bo-peep 
 With Man ! The spirit of Prometheus doth but sleep ! * 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 He ceased, and proudly from his visage flashed 
 Exultant hope’s intensest radiance. 
 
 As, when around Jove’s Titan victim crashed 
 The bounding thunder, and no mitigance 
 Of pain the vulture gave, his soul’s expanse 
 Of hope for mortals filled with thought sublime 
 The offspring of Iapetus, till glance 
 Of lightnings was forgot, and space, and time : 
 
 And Caucasus grew joyous as Elysian clime ! 
 
 l 2 
 
148 
 
 THE PURCA.TORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Silent and solemn musings held the band 
 Of patriot Shades, until, with suave aspect 
 And diffident, the spirit of Roland [6] 
 
 Thus spake : — * 
 
 The universe her Architect 
 All-wise proclaims; since without maim, defect, 
 
 Or vain expenditure of means are all 
 
 His w^orks beheld : their Author they reflect : 
 
 Unseen the central Light Himself ’mid pall 
 Of His Own brightness shrouds, — the Godhead personal. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Yet men deny Him not because their ken 
 Detects not his pure Essence, — neither fail 
 To hymn His all-pervading goodness, when 
 They view pain through His universe prevail ; 
 
 But, rather, as becomes their finite, frail, 
 
 And borrowed being, sum their dwarfish praise 
 With meek confession that poor reason’s pale 
 Includes not perfect judgment of His ways 
 Who of Infinity the boundless sceptre sways. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Soul of Condorcet ! if we now indulge 
 The sceptic’s thought, provoke we not the scourge 
 We inly feel ? Woes, ceaseless, here promulge 
 The vengeance of our Judge. Forbear to urge 
 His justice ! Penal sojourn us may purge 
 From earthly stain. Let us, by duteousness 
 Of mind, assist the cure ; devoutly merge 
 Our pride in awe ; and reverently confess 
 Our wisdom blind — His wisdom’s goodness questionless! — 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 I marvel at thy fear, — in haste replied 
 The sombre spirit : yet I ’sdeign to blame 
 The weakness of a brother ; but confide, 
 
 By power of minist’ring reason to reclaim 
 Thy mind from cowardice. Roland ! the game 
 Of priests hath turned upon that master-trick 
 For ages — ‘ View thy finiteness with shame, 
 
 * And bow before the Infinite !’ — Their quick 
 Presentment of that cheat still serves the politic 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 149 
 
 XLVII1. 
 
 Successors of the Jewish fishers rude, 
 
 As it subserved the hierarchs of old 
 
 That, through the Orient, primal thought subdued, 
 
 And humbled to the dust man’s vision bold, 
 
 Which would have scanned their secrets uncontrolled. 
 Roland ! bethink thee what the cheat is worth ! 
 
 Grant that Infinity cannot unfold 
 Itself to finiteness : that worms of earth 
 Their Maker’s government behold but in its birth : 
 
 XL1X. 
 
 Grant that man seeing but a fleeting part 
 Of God’s illimitable kingdom knows 
 Too little to fill up the boundless chart 
 By guess : yet, needeth it no operose 
 Deduction of our reason to disclose 
 
 This truth unto the simplest, shallowest brain 
 
 In the vast future God cannot oppose 
 Himself : new attributes if He sustain 
 Hereafter, Man now hymns his perfectness, in vain. 
 
 L. 
 
 Thou call’st God’s goodness perfect : yet, 4 It may 
 4 Consist with perfect goodness,’ — say the priests, — 
 
 4 To damn atoms of helplessness, for aye, — ■ 
 
 4 Although Man’s finite reason manifests 
 4 Rebelliousness against such dread behests 
 4 Of Infinite Sovereignty : it may appear 
 4 Lovely, hereafter, — though Man now detests 
 4 Such hideousness, nor doth, in heart, revere — - 
 4 Whate’er his lips profess — this Monster stern, austere: 
 
 LI. 
 
 4 It may appear throughout eternity, 
 
 4 Right and consistent, — though in time it seems 
 4 Monstrously wrong, — that His philanthropy 
 4 Which in creating man so brightly beams, — 
 
 4 A thing in whose vile nature never gleams 
 4 A spark of good desire, — a thing thus made 
 4 Ere it could choose, — which evil good still deems, 
 
 4 And thence can choose but evil — till arrayed 
 4 With power Divine it shuns its former nature’s shade, 
 
150 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII. 
 
 ‘ And seeks the light of holiness, — it may 
 ‘ Consist with His philanthropy to curse 
 ‘ This thing because it never kneels to pray, 
 
 £ And he withholds to ’infuse the will !’ Rehearse 
 These subtleties the Priests until they sperse 
 Man’s mental strength, and blind him with such dust 
 Of postulates as would, if granted, ’merse 
 All things in doubt ; confound false, true, base, just; 
 And jeopard ev’n their godliest saint’s devoutest trust : — 
 
 LIII. 
 
 For, if — still perfect — God can violate 
 Some of His Own great declarations, who 
 Dares say it will His excellence abate 
 If He break others ? May it not congrue 
 Also with his perfections to eschew 
 Fulfilment of His promises of bliss 
 Celestial to the worms that render due 
 Observance to His laws P Folly, than this 
 Quirk of old Austin[7], ne’er framed frailer artifice: — 
 
 LIV. 
 
 The cozener, seeking others to befool 
 Sottishly fools himself. For, hath the saint 
 A firm dependence for that rest of soul, 
 
 That endless cloyless joy his scriptures paint, 
 
 If God of His own moral Self so faint 
 A portraiture vouchsafes that what he saith 
 Must be interpreted without constraint 
 Of Reason, which Himself hath given, and Faith — 
 That is, the Future — must give meaning to His breath ? 
 
 LV. 
 
 If what He saith in Time, by what He doth 
 Throughout Eternity, must be explained, 
 
 How shall His worms repose upon His oath ? 
 
 Seeing that he sweareth by Himself, unstained 
 Would be His word — by deeds ; since what pertained 
 Unto Himself men had not known ! And, thus, 
 
 The saint, though shorn of bliss, and in Hell chained 
 To burn, thrust down with sinners, — murderous 
 And false, no more than they, — could term th’ All Mar 
 
 [vcllous 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 151 
 
 LV1. 
 
 Soul of Condorcet 1 — harshly verbed the ghost 
 Of Petion [8],— I thy thought deep-searching own : 
 
 But wherefore is our after-life engrossed 
 With this tame wordy-war ? Need we impugn 
 Stale, senile fables which the wrinkled crone 
 Old Superstition, yet doth croak and crool 
 Unto Man’s infancy ? Her dying moan 
 Will soon, on earth, be heard : no human mole 
 will long be left to grope beneath her nighted rule. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Shall we our torture’s scanty lapse mispend 
 By coward reasonings on this side the tomb P 
 The strife with scorn why not thus tersely end — 
 
 Saith some cowled fabler — ‘ Shall the clay presume 
 * To prate unto the Potter, nor succumb 
 i To His behests in silent awe ?’ — It shall — 
 
 Thou knavish priest, — if such behests bring doom 
 Of endless torment on the victim thrall 
 Compelled, without its choice, through mortal life to crawl. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 On dreaming dolts, — the shade of Valaze [9] 
 
 Exclaimed, — fraternal suasion were mispent : 
 
 Dolts whom their craven fears will lead astray 
 From manly thought as soon as they have lent 
 Audience to reason. Slow and impotent 
 Of soul, Roland, on earth, thou always wert ; 
 
 But, here, in after-life, new wonderment 
 We feel, beholding thy dull mind begirt [vert. 
 
 With fabling dreams thou sought’st, elsewhere, to contro- 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Weak, fickle spirit, on old Earth, mis-sexed! 
 
 Conjugal tie revealed to human ken 
 The woman’s soul unto thy clay annexed : 
 
 ’Twas thy brave helpmate breathed ’mong souls of men 
 True manhood — the immortal Citoyenne ! [10] 
 
 Dim, wavering Shade ! when wilt thou strive to break 
 This fern’ nine bondage unto weakness ? when 
 Demean thyself like to a man ? Awake 
 Dreamer ! — thy spirit of these fraud-forged fetters shake 
 
152 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 Or, if thou lov’st the dreams that appertain 
 To fools, seek the self-exiled climbing throng 
 That share yon hill. Hence, Folly we in vain 
 Have striven to make wise ! Spirits, with strong 
 Derision let us chase this slave of wrong 
 Forth of our fellowship ! 
 
 Thou viler slave 
 
 Forbear ! Expurge the errors that belong 
 To thine own spirit ere thou fume and rave 
 Against thy brother, thus intolerantly brave ! 
 
 LXI. 
 
 So spake, and fiercely frowned, the Jacobin, 
 
 Le Bas [11], — who with a look of stern delight 
 Beheld, thus far, each haughty Brissotine 
 Scourge his tame brother. Soon, to join the fight 
 Of words hastened full many a sturdy sprite 
 Badged of 1 the Mountain’ — when the strife of blood 
 Raged in distracted France : Girondist wight 
 Gave gall for gibe : fell combat seemed renewed 
 Of Freedom’s doubly suicidal brotherhood. [12] 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Malevolence, and spite, and rancour burned 
 Through their thin vehicles, with lurid flame ; 
 
 And madly, that he were, once more, disurned 
 From the dark tomb to play an aftergame 
 Of blood, each yearned, and did with zeal proclaim 
 His frantic wish ! So horrible it seemed 
 To witness how they raged, that being became 
 A torture ; and, unconscious that I dreamed, 
 
 Methought I mourned as one to baleful life condemned. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 But, lo ! a sudden, silent pallor seized 
 The hostile crew, beholding where upreared 
 A Shape threat’ning as spectre unappeased 
 By devlish wizard who beholds afeard 
 The power his sable mischief hath unsphered, 
 
 But lacks the deeper skill to lay. Atween 
 
 Two cirque -stones vast the huge, gray Shape appeared, 
 
 So stone-like, and so blind, yet stern, of mien, 
 
 That nought proclaimed it human save its gaberdine. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 153 
 
 LXfV. 
 
 Dark atheist brood !— the mystic Shape began ; 
 
 Cease to malign Him Who the sceptre wields 
 Of Universe, all Being's Guardian ! 
 
 Whose glory seraphs chaunt on heavenly fields; 
 
 Whose favour from their foes earth’s chosen shields ; 
 Whose vengeance ye, in Sheol [13], deeply prove ! 
 
 Foul sons of Belial ! ev’n your hatred yields 
 Proof that Jehovah, from His throne above, 
 
 Governeth Men as much by judgment as by love. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Did ye not tear each other like the wolf 
 And bear on earth ? Did ye not rend and rive 
 Your fellow-clay until one crimson gulph 
 Your city seemed ? Here, in the soul, survive 
 Its cherished evils : judgment punitive 
 Condemns ye thus to ravin in your minds, 
 
 And slaughter with your thoughts. Nor will ye strive 
 To burst your dimning veil, for that each finds 
 Foul pleasure in the darkness which his spirit blinds. 
 
 LX VI. 
 
 Judicial blindness is your guilt-won lot : — 
 
 And, though ye mock, your hard impenitence 
 I here rebuke : until, — foul pride subtraught 
 From your soul’s core, and evil prurience 
 Of self-willed doubt, — with duteous reverence 
 Ye bow r to the Most High — returning peace 
 Ye ne’er shall know : but torturous turbulence 
 And rage of vengeful passions shall increase 
 Within ye ; nor shall ye your wandering penance cease ? 
 
 LX vi i. 
 
 Jehovah hath a quarrel with your pride. 
 
 Think ye that He will deign to justify 
 Himself to atoms unto Nought allied P 
 Not to the proud into His ways that pry — 
 
 But, to the meek who on His word rely, 
 
 He showeth favour. 
 
 Slaughterous Shophet[l4] hoary* — 
 Condorcet’s spirit hurled back proud reply, — 
 
 "Repeat no more thy oft-told doting story ! 
 
 We bow not to thy Blood-God’s homicidal glory ! 
 
154 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXV1II. 
 
 Meek champion of the lofty deity 
 Who clave the ass’s jaw-bone to reprieve 
 Thy murderous life, rather than cleave for thee 
 A thunder-blasted tomb, — though Fraud misweave 
 Such shapes as His and thine, to disbelieve 
 That ye exist — we dare ! Abortive dreams 
 Of lust and blood incarnate ! fools receive 
 For high realities the priestly themes [temns ! 
 
 Of your strange deeds: Wisdom such barb’rous tales con- 
 
 LX1X. 
 
 Phantasm avaunt ! No real shape thou art ; 
 
 But gendered of our insane sage and broils ; 
 
 Or, with a myriad other mists athwart 
 
 Our thoughts that flit, thou and thy god are foils 
 
 Of truth, which, when her strength she overtoils, 
 
 The purblind Mind creates — 
 
 Blasphemers bold ! — 
 
 Samson burst forth in ire, while the hoar piles 
 Of stone shook to their bases, leave untold 
 Your daring sneers ! — provoke not vengeance manifold ! 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Vile slaves of self-deceit ! — vaunt not your zeal 
 For truth. Whence is this horror ye profess 
 For violence ? If ye to earth appeal 
 What saith she, shudd’ring, of your foul excess 
 Of fratricide ? To whom could ye address 
 So fitly as to Murder Deified 
 Your vows of blood ? Powers whose enormousness 
 Of massacre and ravine thought outstride 
 High o’er the rites of mutual butchers should preside. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Affect ^o more this horror, so demure, 
 
 Of His strict rule Who portions penance just 
 Unto the filthy : favour to the pure. 
 
 Could ye be gods, to sate your rav’ning lust 
 For blood, whole human hecatombs slaves must 
 Pile on your Moloch-altars day by day ! 
 
 Your lives disprove your claim to style august 
 Of high philanthropists: ere ye inveigh 
 ’Gainst murder and revenge, mercy yourselves disj lay ! 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 155 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Brood of assasins — ere ye mock at deeds 
 Achieved by Israel’s champion — with your own 
 Compare them. Faiths ye scoffed at — yet for creeds 
 Slaughtered each other ! To destroy the throne 
 Ye banded, since a monster curse ’twas grown — 
 
 And then o’er crowds enfranchised raised the knife ! — 
 I wonder Earth, with headless corses strown 
 And drenched with gore, from such horrific strife 
 Shrunk not upon her axle till she quelled all life ! 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Ye slaughtered for the sake of blood: I slew 
 My foes in self-defence. Ye murdered whom 
 Yourselves made free ! — I crushed the brutal crew 
 Of haughty tyrants who to slavish doom 
 Sentenced my fatherland, — ay, in one tomb 
 O’erwhelmed myself and them, rather than live 
 Myself a slave — my country slaved ! To dumb 
 Confusion are ye stricken P Let shame revive ! — 
 
 Her glow, though late, may prove of wisdom nutritive. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Now, list my embassy from souls of kings 
 And Gentile Shophets who in throned conclave, 
 
 Ye know, at lapse of penal wanderings, 
 
 Sit girt with pomps, and visioned splendours have. 
 Whether the Power that breathed all life Man gave 
 Unto his brother like the ox and horse 
 To minister, a sturdy, craft-trained slave 
 For food, — or did 4 Equality’ endorse 
 On human natures — they pursue abstruse discourse. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Such is the essence of their strife — surround 
 It as they may with mist of words. Had ye 
 Less madly played your part millions unbound 
 Might now proclaim the coming jubilee 
 Of nations: Sheol’s Thrones, through sympathy, 
 Forbode their fall — conscious of mystic tie 
 That binds them with Earth’s crowns : their destiny 
 And Man’s they seek: I bid ye to the high 
 Debate : — but, nrst, your souls’ dark errors rectify ! 
 
156 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 1 leave ye to self-chastisement — that scourge 
 More poignant than all tortures from without. 
 
 May deep-wrought penitence your spirits purge 
 From the foul stain of atheistic doubt — 
 
 That ye, at length, may join the choral shout 
 Of ransomed millions, when to end all pain 
 God’s great Messiah comes ! — that vision fraught 
 With bliss the rapt seers saw on Jordan’s plain 
 And Judah’s sacred hills. Jehovah, haste Thy reign ! 
 
 LXXVI 1. 
 
 He spake and faded,— as some threatening cloud 
 Of fearful shape disperseth in thin air 
 Leaving no trace to shew where, ebon-browed, 
 
 But now, it frowned and darkened to despair 
 The eye of day. No more with rage to tear 
 And rend each other burned the jarring host 
 Of patriot Shades rebuked ; but, to declare 
 His chastened thought began Baboeuf’s pale ghost — 
 Equality’s last self-exile from Gallia’s coast. [15] 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 If brothers still we be, — he said, — and zeal 
 For contest has not cancelled loftier sense 
 Of right, — let us essay this strife to heal 
 With kindliness : not vengeful virulence 
 Will chase from Mind its raylessness intense, 
 
 Nor free it from fanatic mists obscure. 
 
 Boast we of Reason ? — let us evidence 
 The gift by pointing, with persuasion pure, 
 
 Our weaker brother unto Truth’s bright cynosure. 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 I yield not to this terror-shape belief 
 
 In his old fables ; neither fail to know 
 
 That earthly tyrannies derive their chief 
 
 Strength from the fear with which men quake and bow 
 
 To Powers Unknown. Yet, brothers, do we owe 
 
 Regard to these rebukes : let each, then, list ; 
 
 And cease these pois’nous gibes whereby our woe 
 Is deepened, — soul to soul antagonist 
 Becomes, — and Earth’s old jars in after-life exist. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 157 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Fled we not hither less by inward dread 
 Of ignominious death than sick at heart 
 With our abortive strife, in which was shed 
 Torrents of Frenchmen’s blood ? Oh ! let the smart 
 Of anguish for self-errors here impart 
 Regretful tenderness for frailties shown 
 By brethren. Still, I fear, these storms athwart 
 Our after-life will come ! My stain I own ; 
 
 And would by present pain for errors past atone ! 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 Spirits ! — rejoined Condorcet, — Humbled thought 
 Avails not the mind’s errors to expel : 
 Self-chastisement for frailty nurtures not 
 The growth of wisdom : Reason doth rebel 
 Against the slavish gloom which priests so well, 
 
 For their vile ends, depicture as the true 
 Discipline for the soul. They most excel 
 In wisdom who the past can calmly view 
 With deep resolve error in future to eschew. 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 Ay, they are wisest, best, who still maintain 
 The calm, firm, steady toil to’ emancipate 
 Mind from its frailties : Tears, on earth, are vain. 
 And low regrets, in this our afterstate : 
 
 Man’s noblest part is still to battle Fate, 
 
 Or Circumstance, or whatsoe’er afflict 
 His essence ; — joy, as grief, to moderate 
 By Reason’s rule — not monkish rigour strict : 
 
 Rale that with ease the soul may gratefully addict 
 
 LXXXI1I. 
 
 Herself to serve ; and by sure steps, though slow 
 Thus climb Elysian height serene. How long 
 In circles shall we reason ? Whence the woe 
 We here experience— save from passion strong 
 And changeful ? Spirits ! let us not prolong 
 Debate amid these ruins ; but the theme 
 Renew where kings invite polemic throng 
 Of essences ! 
 
 I woke : for, like a gleam 
 Electric, vanished the wild actors of my dream 1 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza 13. — I write from no personal knowledge of 
 John Frost, — for the ‘ Newport insurrection’ occurred more 
 than a year before I became acquainted with a single Chartist, 
 — but from the testimony of my eloquent and intelligent friend, 
 Henry Vincent, who had witnessed Mr. Frost’s upright dis- 
 charge of duty as a magistrate, frequently partook of his hos- 
 pitality, shared deeply his political views and purposes, and 
 speaks enthusiastically (I mean in private) of the poor exile’s 
 generous sincerity and patriotic high-mindedness. 
 
 [2] Stanza 14. — • 
 
 “ Treason doth never prosper : what’s the reason 
 For, if it prosper none dare call it treason.” 
 
 So says Sir John Harrington ; and, without asserting that it 
 was morally or physically possible for the Welsh emeute of 
 November, 1839, to have succeeded, — I shall not shrink to 
 avow my conviction that the fated enterprise of John Frost, 
 which had for its object the enfranchisement of every sane 
 male inhabitant of Great Britain and Ireland, of twenty-one 
 years of age, was equally as noble, although not so imposing, 
 as the triumph-in- arms of the Barons of Runnymede, — or the 
 * Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. Reflection, and, above all, 
 pnsora-reflection, has, indeed, done much to impress me with 
 the belief that a resort to force, under any circumstances, is 
 indefensible, either as a wise or a just proceeding ; but, for the 
 life of me, I cannot subdue the feeling of an Englishman when 
 the picture starts before my imagination of Hampden on Chal- 
 grove Field “ drawing the sword and throwing away the scab- 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIFTH. 159 
 
 bard.” And if Patriotism need not be ashamed at the thrill 
 of blood which such a portrait enkindles, why blush to own ad- 
 miration for the heroism of poor Shell, — a youth of singular 
 masculine beauty, and an enthusiast for the enfranchisement of 
 his own order, — and who loaded and fired his piece three 
 times, with the greatest intrepidity, before he fell in the streets 
 of Newport? We do not write History like the glorious old 
 Greeks, or the memory of such a hero would not be lost. 
 Lost ! — let me remember that a Nugent — to whom all honour ! 
 — has had the moral courage to exert himself, and successfully, 
 for the erection of a column on Chalgrove Field, at the bi-cen- 
 tenary of Hampden's death. May not a noble be found in 
 November 2039, to commemorate Shell’s fall at Newport with 
 equal earnestness ? Servility and Prejudice may be staggered 
 at the thought now ; but what would have been thought of a 
 column to Hampden, when the bones of Cromwell, Bradshaw, 
 and Ireton had been dug up, and were hung in gibbet* irons ? 
 
 [3] Stanza 17. — See the Preface. 
 
 [4] Stanza 32. — Buzot was esteemed as one of the best 
 business men of the talented Gironde party. He fled when 
 his party was proscribed by * the Mountain,’ or Robespierre 
 party, and committed suicide. 
 
 [5] Stanza 3G. — Condorcet, i the sombre spirit whom Buzot 
 addressed,’ was, undoubtedly, the profoundest intellect among 
 the Girondists. Mathematicians are proud of his name. On 
 the proscription of his party, he took refuge, for a time, in 
 one of the lime-pits in the neighbourhood of Paris. Hunger, 
 at length, compelled him to venture out from his concealment : 
 he was discovered ; when, to save himself from the ignominy 
 of public execution, he took, what he had long carried about 
 with him, a concentrated preparation of opium, sufficient to 
 ensure death. 
 
 [6] Stanza 44. — Roland, minister of the Interior, during 
 the prief period preceding the death of Louis XVI., in which 
 
160 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 the Gironde, or Moderate party, held office, threw up the 
 seals the day after the king’s execution. Proscribed with the 
 rest of his party, by “ the Mountain,’* he concealed himself ; 
 but on hearing that his wife had been guillotined, he “ killed 
 himself,” says Mignet, “on the high road.” 
 
 [7] Stanza 53. — “ Quirk of old Austin.” — I do not think it 
 unfair to charge St. Augustine, the author of the famous 
 “ Confessions,” with the chief blame of all the extravagancies 
 of high Calvinism. By their own account, it was from study- 
 ing him, that Luther, Calvin himself, and other Reformers* 
 imbibed their rigid notions of predestination, &c. 
 
 [8] Stanza 56. — Pdtion, Mayor of Paris, before the fall of 
 the Gironde, fled, in company with Buzot, when they were 
 proscribed. They committed suicide, it is believed, together 
 and were found in a field, half devoured by wolves. 
 
 [9] Stanza 58. — Valaze, when condemned to the guillotine, 
 with twenty other members of the Gironde party, stabbed 
 himself to the heart with a poignard, on hearing the sentence* 
 
 [10] Stanza 59. — “The immortal Citoyenne.” That the 
 wife, and not the husband, was the real * Minister of the In- 
 terior’, writers of all shades of party agree. “ He would have 
 produced little effect but for his wife,” says Mignet ; “ All he 
 wanted she had for him ; force, ability, elevation, foresight. 
 Madame Roland was the soul of the Gironde ; it was at her 
 nouse that those brilliant and courageous men assembled to 
 discuss the necessities and dangers of their country ; it was 
 she who stimulated to action those whom, she saw were quali- 
 fied for action, and who encouraged to the tribune those whom 
 she knew to be eloquent.” Her exclamation, on passing the 
 statue of Liberty, as she was led to the guillotine, is memorable , 
 “ Ah, Liberty ! what crimes have been committed in thy 
 name !” 
 
 [11] Stanza 61. — The Jacobin, Le Bas. — Mignet (I prefer to 
 quote him, on account of his brevity and clearness), thus 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE FIFTH. 
 
 161 
 
 describes the desperation of the Jacobins, when surrounded 
 in the Hotel de Ville, where they had taken refuge, after their 
 denunciation : “ Robespierre shattered his jaw with a pistol- 
 shot ; Le Bas followed his example, but succeeded in killing 
 himself ; Robespierre, the younger, jumped from a window 
 on the third story, and survived his fall ; Couthon hid himself 
 under a table ; Saint Just awaited his fate ; Cofhnhall, after 
 reproaching Henriot with cowardice, threw him from a win- 
 dow into a gutter and fled.” 
 
 [12] Stanza 61. — The list of suicides among the actors of 
 the French Revolution might be swelled by the names ot 
 Chamfort, Claviere, Rebecqui, Romme, Ruhl, Goujon, &c. 
 Thomas Carlyle classes Barbaroux among the number ; but 
 Mignet affirms that he perished on the scaffold. 
 
 [13] Stanza 64. — “ Sheol” — the Hebrew word for Hades, or 
 the region of the departed. 
 
 [14] Stanza 67. — “ Shophet” — the Hebrew word for Judge, 
 or Ruler. Shophetim , is the title of the Book of Judges, in 
 the original. 
 
 15] Stanza 77. — “Gracchus” Baboeuf, “Tribune of the 
 People” and Darthd, both stabbed themselves in court, 
 when sentenced to death, with their fellow-conspirators for 
 “ Equality” : theirs was the last struggle for ultra-democracy, 
 after the death of Robespierre. 
 
 M 
 
 11 
 

 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 Blood! blood! Ye human hell-hounds, when, oh! when 
 Will ye have had your fill ? The hazy morn 
 Hath scarcely dawned upon this grisly den 
 Of demon Power, ere yon poor wretch forlorn 
 Is led to slaughter : — led P nay, fainting, borne 
 Unto the ladder’s foot ! Murder by law — 
 
 In lieu of med’cine till his wits return — 
 
 For one impelled to kill, by his brain-flaw ; 
 
 And then to weep, when he his slaughtered infant saw 
 
 n. 
 
 It is the death-toll : there ! they bear him on ! 
 
 I climb to read the lesson through my bars. — 
 
 Hah ! curse upon thee, priest ! — is it well done, 
 
 That thou, a peace-robed herald pattering prayers, 
 
 Dost head the death-march ? Trow’st thou not it jars 
 With that sky-message which proclaimed, thou say’st, 
 
 * Peace and Goodwill to Man’ ? — ay, that it mars 
 The face of mercy to behold thee placed [graced 
 There, in grim state, ’tween spears with crape, in mockery 
 
 iii. 
 
 ’Tis passed, — the bloody cavalcade : Farewell, 
 
 Poor pale, weak, fellow- worm! ’twill soon be o’er — 
 Thy tearful pilgrimage. ’Tis done ! — the knell 
 Ceases : and though, I, happ’ly, see no more 
 Of the fell tragedy, the sullen roar 
 Of groans and execrations, pierces through 
 My dungeon-grating ; for the gazers pour 
 The heart’s involuntary curse on you, 
 
 Ye hireling butchers who now ‘give the law its due!’ [1] 
 
 m 2 
 
164 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Oh ! I would weep throughout the live-long day 
 With memory how my fellow-man hath wept 
 Through ages, and bewail him as the prey 
 Of foul Draconian beasts which he hath kept 
 In reverence high ; but, that I feel, except 
 The melting mood be mastered, and fierce ire 
 As well, and Man becomes a calm adept 
 In tracing errors to their spring, the fire 
 Of that real Hell that burns on earth shall ne’er expire. 
 
 v. 
 
 Why should I curse thee, priest ? Art thou not bound 
 To’ obey thy patched creed’s dogmas ? 4 Blood for blood' 
 
 Thy rubric reads, — with logic most profound ! 
 
 And, lest by disobedience, the world should 
 Halt on its axle, ye, meek brotherhood ! 
 
 Must see the ‘Law Divine’ fulfilled. He meant 
 Not what he said — the Nazarene — the Good ! 
 
 Or, still the rubric stands for murderers : blent 
 With mystery is God’s law : Himself knows His intent ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Hah ! how long will ye palter thus, to screen 
 Your conscious inconsistency, and hide 
 The Truth from Man P Either the Nazarene 
 Or Moses errs. And., if stern homicide 
 Man’s homicidal will could salutarily’ chide 
 Of old,— the Law of Blood, maugre all change, 
 
 Must still be wholesome. But, ye should abide 
 By all the Law : 4 eye,’ 4 tooth,’ 4 hand,’ 4 foot’ — avenge, 
 Avenge l — Ye may not from the whole a part estrange ! [2] 
 
 VII. 
 
 Doff, then, thine alb, and don the ephod, priest, — 
 
 If thou art Moses’ minister ! Ah, no ! — 
 
 Thou too successfully and long hast fleeced 
 The sheep in that white garment to forego 
 The gain of doubleness. Neither art thou 
 And thy smooth tribe unskilful to discern 
 That while ye must stand by your yokefellow, 
 
 The hangman, and together deftly learn 
 To prop kings’ sway, — fair uses hath your coat extern : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 1G5 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It symbols meekness well, and peace, ye preach 
 To slaves : Christ’s precepts are for them ! Your drame 
 Hath thus its parts, and ye are prompt for each ! 
 
 Dark ambidexters in the guilty game 
 Of human subjugation ! how to tame 
 Man’s spirit ye, and only ye, have skill : 
 
 Kings need your help to hold their thrones ; while claim 
 Of sanctity enables ye, at will, 
 
 To wield o’er prostrate Reason subtler empire still ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 What tyrants leave unvanquished in the mind 
 By threat of chains, the gallows, flame, or sword, 
 
 Ye humble by your Hell ! — 
 
 Was I not blind — 
 
 To judge ye inconsistent ? True accord 
 Subsists between your new and elder ‘word,’ 
 
 Ye throw away no part: it is because, 
 
 With cunning shrewder than the simple horde 
 O’ th’ laity, ye ken the penal clause 
 Blends in one spirit fierce the old and late Jew’s laws. 
 
 x. 
 
 ‘ Forgive them, for they know not what they do !’— 
 
 O Christ ! ho\y worshipfully great thou art 
 Uttering such dying breath 1 A lowly Jew, 
 
 Born and brought up with bigots whose old heart 
 Was nurtured, from far time, to count the smart 
 Of suffering in a foe sweet to behold ; 
 
 From rule of blood for blood ne’er to depart, — 
 
 Of eye for eye, and tooth for tooth ; to fold 
 The law of vengeance, given while the thunder roll’d, 
 
 XI. 
 
 And lightnings flashed, and the loud trumpet pealed 
 Forth from the shrouded hill, in the heart’s core, 
 
 As dearer than all treasures earth can yield; 
 
 Law eulogised, confirmed by Prophets hoar, 
 
 By solemn awe-rapt bards, and all the lore 
 Thy country ever knew ! If not Divine 
 Thou wert, — thy self-born light and love is more 
 Miraculous than aught by all the line 
 Of the heart’s precept-makers writ in page benign. 
 
THK PURGATORY 
 
 1 G6 
 
 XII. 
 
 Hunted to death, — nailed to ‘the tree of shame/ — 
 Fainting, expiring, — and thy last heart-prayer 
 Breathing for them who gibbeted thy name 
 Above that thorn-crowned head, nor did forbear, 
 
 When spirit-desolation or despair 
 Seized thee, to mock thy groans ! Forgiveness, — love, — 
 For those who tortured thee ! Oh ! if such rare 
 Triumph o’er ill be human, it doth prove 
 A glorious nobility in Man enwove ! 
 
 XIII. 
 
 And ’tis enwove in Man : else, wherefore pleads 
 High reason in that prayer P — ‘ they know not what 
 ‘ They do !’ — Compassion for a being whose deeds 
 Resulting from his ignorance denote 
 His errors accidental : not inwrought 
 By natural vice, or willed, in Reason’s spite, 
 
 When Knowledge shews the wrong. By Reason brought 
 Thus to regard our brother, inner might 
 Of love fraternal springs, and Pity’s calm delight. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 What say’st thou, priest ? ‘It is not thus’ P Do threats 
 Of Hell, then, fill the heart with this intense 
 And holy bliss of pitying love ? Begets 
 Thy rhet’ric of the flames which Providence 
 Almighty ever blows for bodily’ sense 
 (By miracle also made eternal) ; worm, 
 
 Deathless and sateless, preying’ without suspense 
 On conscience ; do these horrors sow the germ 
 Of love in Man, and threats renewed its growth confirm ? 
 
 xv. 
 
 And yet, thy Master preached this Hell : with all 
 His sovereign magnanimity, and free 
 Expanse of soul, the Nazarene a thrall 
 Remained to the old desart-Deity, — 
 
 The ‘jealous’ Vengeance-God! — 
 
 Shrewd Priest ! of thee 
 I judged but shallowly: thy puzzle-book 
 Thou read’st more skilfully than I : agree 
 Thy teachers twain : the Galilean shook [yoke. 
 
 Not off from his large mind the mountain-thunderer’s 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 167 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Hell-fire,— coercion, — for the ingrate hard 
 Who will not love the God set forth as high, 
 
 Vast, indescribable, in His Love’s regard 
 For Men ! * Love Him ; or He will magnify 
 
 < His glory by consigning thee to die 
 * In ceaseless flames an ever-living death’ ! — 
 
 0 Christ ! how can I love what doth outvie 
 All tyrannies in horribleness of wrath : 
 
 This monstrous Thing derived from an old monster Faith P 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Thine, Galilean, is of all earth’s creeds 
 The greatest marvel! Wonder at thy toil 
 Of tears, self-sacrifice, and love, succeeds 
 Each step we tread with thee — till this dread foil 
 Unto thy moral beauty doth despoil 
 The yearning heart of its impassioned hope : 
 Death-stricken, blighted, doth the soul recoil 
 From its tempestuous wish to love thee : droop 
 It must in doubt; and to its bourne in darkness grope ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Oh ! hadst thou not so lovely been on earth, 
 
 1 would not care to share thy Paradise : 
 
 This wish to live beyond the grave hath birth 
 Without my will ; yet, by the sovereign voice 
 Of Reason ’twould be hushed, but that the bliss 
 Of knowing such a heart as thine doth seem 
 
 A boundless joy, — a good beyond all price : 
 
 And still I wish thy heaven were not a dream ; 
 
 And, to my latest hour shall doat upon that theme ! 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Alas ! thy repetition of that most 
 Enslaving of all slavish thoughts — a Hell 
 Wherewith the Priest may threat to tame the ghost 
 Of him who dares in mortal life rebel 
 ’Gainst Faith or Kings — restrains the heart’s love-swell 
 Rushing to centre in thee, and reveals 
 To Reason that thou couldst not burst the spell 
 Of Circumstance — which ev’n the mightiest seals 
 In impotence : we do but act as she impels. 
 
168 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Greatest of moral miracles thou art : 
 
 In godlikeness above all godlike men : 
 
 Pard’ning thy murd’rers, even while thy heart 
 They pierced : born in a land where rock and glen, 
 
 On every hand that met thy love-lit ken, 
 
 Were during witnesses of brothers’ blood 
 Shed by, or for Jehovah ! — Denizen 
 Of such a clime — Child of so fierce a brood — 
 
 What wonder at one speck in thy vast sun of good ? 
 
 XXI. 
 
 One link — thy penal Hell, — with the old Past — 
 
 Of Force, the homage-time so reverent — 
 
 Connects thee ; but, thy themes of mercy vast, 
 
 Of love and brotherhood, — the aliment 
 Shall be for kindred souls on love intent 
 And mercy, every hour, until the might 
 Their spirits draw from thine all-prevalent 
 Shall render them ; and they shall chase the Sprite 
 Of Blood and Force that doth all human joyaunce blight. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Goodness, thou didst enthrone : our generous sires, 
 
 Drawn by thy generous themes, Woden and Thor 
 
 Abandoned, quenching all their idol-fires 
 
 To worship Whom they called 6 the Good.’ Before 
 
 Goodness personified thy Gospel’s lore 
 
 Taught them, they thought, to bow ; and ‘God’ became 
 
 Their Deity [3] 
 
 What small shrill voice doth pour 
 Its wailing from that grated window-frame ? 
 
 What note of Pain doth thus my feeble brain-steps maim ? 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Hah ! murderous spider! when I watched thee spread 
 
 Thy cobweb yestermorn, it did relieve 
 
 A dreary prison-hour to mark each thread 
 
 From thee, thou magic artizan, receive 
 
 Its faery texture : while I saw thee weave 
 
 That daedal miracle, this poison -thought 
 
 Rose not that now impelleth me to grieve 
 
 Much more than to admire — to grieve and doubt, 
 
 A*, in a torment- web, like thy poor victim, caught ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 1 6 b 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Priest ! dost thou smile, beholding how Thought’s web 
 
 Baffles and binds me with its mystery, 
 
 Yea, lays me, helpless as a limber babe, 
 
 At Mystery’s feet? Oh ! I will slander thee 
 No more : if Nature hath a Deity, 
 
 The Bible doth not slanderously limn 
 
 His portraiture : Author of agony 
 
 The living book doth, hourly, picture Him : 
 
 The written — thrones a Slaughterer ’tween the Cherubim I 
 
 XXV. 
 
 ’Tis clear : who tries the Faith by Nature’s test — 
 
 O modern Stagyrite ! — between thy creed 
 And Her must own ‘ Analogy’ confest.[4] 
 
 * Submit thee, then, vain doubter ! — since decreed 
 
 * It is that Life consists of things of greed 
 
 ‘ And things to be their prey, — submit and bow 
 ‘ To Him who made them thus : back, that may lead 
 ‘ Thee to the Faith in which, thou dost allow, 
 
 * The Deity is drawn with Nature’s girded brow !’ 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Priest ! I will answer thee with that free soul 
 
 These bolts and bars have only served to thew. 
 
 Forty short summers towards my earthly goal 
 Have 1 now journeyed, — and, for me, but few 
 More summers can remain: Wrong to eschew, 
 
 And Right to treasure in the heart’s recess, 
 
 How can I lack dispose, — while, to my view, 
 
 The grave is yawning in its cold duresse 
 To close what tyrants leave of my clay’s feebleness ? 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Priest! I have felt by turns from earliest days, 
 
 As well as calms, the tempests of the brain : 
 
 Fervid devotion, and the wild rapt blaze 
 Of ecstasy in prayer ; ascetic pain 
 And fasting; midnight book- toil to obtain 
 The key to facts — knowledge of tongues of old; 
 Weighing of evidence — grave — long — again ; 
 
 With constant watchings how Man doth unfold 
 What is the impress true he bears from Nature’s mould 
 
170 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVII k 
 
 And this, in humbleness I would declare, 
 
 And yet with courage, is my only Faith : — 
 
 Goodness alone, with its blest, yearning care, 
 
 Is worshipfu) — for Goodness only hath 
 Power to make good and happy things of breath 
 And thought. If Man can be transformed 
 Wholly to virtue, — punishment and wrath, — 
 
 Taught by all priests that on the earth have swarmed, — 
 Must be untaught ; and Man by Love to Right be charmed. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Goodness alone is worshipful. Not what 
 Gives life, but what gives happiness is good. 
 
 I cannot worship what I own a blot 
 To be in my own nature — hasty flood 
 Of feeling that with ireful hardihood 
 Would rush to do what I would soon regret: 
 
 Nor can I worship, priest ! thy Shapes of Blood, 
 
 Or Nature’s cause of Pain. If to beget 
 Love in the soul these fail — shall worship there be met ? 
 
 XXX. 
 
 I cannot worship what I cannot lore, 
 
 If this be vicious, priest ! shew me the way 
 To virtue : 1 will own — if thou dost prove — 
 
 My error : but, till then, I humbly say, 
 
 I think the error thine. To resurvey, 
 
 For proofs of Deity, great Nature’s face, 
 
 Drawn, yea impelled, unto Mind’s latest day, 
 
 I shall be by Her wonders; but— th’ embrace 
 Of All-pervading Goodness — shall I find It’s trace ? 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 I say not that there is no God : but that 
 I know not. Dost thou know, or dost thou guess ? 
 Why should I ask thee, priest ? Darkness hath sat 
 With Light on Nature — Woe with Happiness 
 Since human worms crawled from their languageless 
 Imperfect embryons, and by signs essayed 
 To picture their first thoughts. ’Tis but excess 
 Of folly to attempt the great charade 
 To solve : and yet the irking wish must be obeyed ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 171 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Night hath returned on me, — ev’n as it closed 
 Upon these dizzying thoughts in human things 
 Thousands of years ago : — Two Powers opposed 
 Eternally, — or Good with boundless wings 
 Brooding o’er Universe — the egg whence springs 
 Evil : the Mede’s, Hindoo’s, Egyptian’s strife 
 To make himself believe some glimmerings 
 He saw of Truth, through Nature’s garment rife 
 With Mystery : Hebrew fable of primeval life 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 In happy Eden— Eve, and glozing snake : 
 
 Or myth more artificial of the land 
 Of arts and song — Pandora’s bok, with ache 
 And boil and pestilence, by man’s rash hand 
 Unlidded — punishment for theft of brand 
 
 From Heaven : 
 
 Night hath returned, as she returned 
 To millions, who through life thus vainly scanned 
 The face of mystery. What, though they burned 
 In vain to know, yet never Nature’s secret learned ? 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Desire to know must still within us burn — 
 
 Though its quick fire our fragile clay consume : 
 
 For who would crawl in brutal unconcern 
 Along his fated pathway to the tomb, 
 
 Nor ever ask if thought-flame shall relume 
 This clay, or it shall sleep a dull, dark, cold, 
 
 Eternal sleep ?• — 
 
 I slept, and dreamt the doom 
 Of suicidal souls — great souls of old — 
 
 1 did, once more, in mystic spirit-land behold. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 The thrones were set, in gorgeous shew, beneath 
 The rainbow-roofed and column-girt expanse, 
 
 Filled with the votaries of self-wrought death 
 I saw before ; and with like cognizance 
 Of crown and sceptre, shedding radiance 
 From gems and gold, they sat, — or, lesser state 
 Kept, as of civic power’s participance 
 The fitter emblem. ’Sdeignfully elate 
 Some sat, while some sent forth deep glances of debate : 
 
] 72 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 For, mingled with the thrones, rose seats of strange 
 Fantastic structure — seeming, medley-wise, 
 
 The courage, cunning, pride, despair, revenge, 
 
 The love of fatherland, or high emprise, 
 
 Wisdom, or eloquence, to symbolize 
 Of their famed occupants — a lustrous host 
 Begirt with rays, whose thoughts wore no disguise, — 
 So that my spirit scanned each musing ghost, 
 
 And read the characters in his mind’s book engrossed. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Transcending far, in grace, all regal thrones, 
 
 ’Twin seats neighb’ring the godlike Spartan’s stood, 
 O’ercanopied with bended necks of swans, 
 
 And wings of doves circling their callow brood, 
 Adorned beneath with blossom, bell, and bud, 
 
 The loveliest of every season’s growth, 
 
 In garlands woven, upon drapery strewed 
 With bees that swarmed on infant Plato’s mouth, [5] 
 And lucent shells that gem the sea-shore of the south ; 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Whereon, sat he whose lightning-tipped tongue 
 Had made Greece glorious unto farthest time, 
 
 Had Socrates ne’er lived, nor Homer sung, 
 
 Nor Marathon been found beneath her clime; [6] 
 
 And, by his side, his brother Greek, the prime 
 
 In rhetoric art, Isocrates, — whose pen 
 
 Could fill the Attic mind with throes sublime, — 
 
 Ay, fire the brain of humblest citizen 
 With ecstasy unknown to gross-souled, late-born men. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 An elder glory, near Demosthenes 
 And his fraternal sprite, on radiant seat 
 Upborne, like Neptune’s chariot on the seas, 
 
 Appeared : prows of the Persian’s prostrate fleet, 
 
 And eagles’ wings, and tridents — hatchments meet 
 
 For victory — with oaken wreaths, adorned 
 
 His bright shell-chariot ; while with prancing feet, 
 
 His fish-tailed steeds the waveless pavement spurned, 
 And, proudly, to the roof, their wide-spread nostrils turned : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 173 
 
 XL. 
 
 And throned in glory sat the illustrious shade 
 Of him whose name with Salamis shall live 
 For aye, [7] — ’less freemen fail and Freedom fade 
 On every shore, and some new Xerxes give 
 To earth his will for law, and ocean grieve, 
 
 Mirthful no longer at the tyrant’s whip. — 
 
 That latest Greek who struggled to retrieve 
 His country’s greatness, and the plumes to clip 
 Of Rome’s fierce eagle, by Acheean captainship, 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Sat next Themistocles, — the latest Greek 
 Worthy the name, — Dieeus, — who, when fell 
 Corinth with Carthage, scorned to live a meek 
 Breath-unit in a world now Rome’s, or swell 
 Her earth-spread train of slaves. [8] Immoveable 
 Sat Zeno, stoic sire, on shapeless rock 
 Of ebon granite, with a look to quell 
 Kings’ mindless pomps, so loftily it woke 
 The regal soul to spurn false grandeur’s gaudy yoke. [9] 
 
 XLII. 
 
 His noblest Roman son the suicide, 
 
 Of Utica, [10] with simple oaken crown 
 Adorned, sat on a kindred rock, and eyed 
 Th’ enervate Antony upon his throne, 
 
 Until he seemed to shrink beneath that frown, 
 
 And shun its keen reproof. A mystic shape 
 On milk-white steed, girt with a starry zone, 
 
 Sat smiling as he saw the pavement gape : 
 
 Emblems of Rome’s cleft forum, Curtius, and his leap.[l i ] 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Twin-seats, again, I saw, near Antony’s, — 
 
 But, unlike his, of iron mould, — and blazed 
 With sword and spear, and manifold device 
 Of slaughter, — whereon sat the twain oft praised 
 For patriots : th’ aristocrats who raised 
 Their daggers ’gainst the despot — npt to pave 
 Plebeian paths to Right ; but, long bedazed 
 With freedom false, patrician power to save : [12] 
 
 They who, near Philippi, sped, world-sick, to the grave. 
 
174 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 And near them sat Caius til’ Agrarian, [13] — 
 
 Cornelia’s younger boast, — the truly great 
 
 And good, though stamped with History’s hireling ban 
 
 With simple oaken chaplet he kepi^state 
 
 Kings seemed to envy, as he smiling sate 
 
 On cornucopias shedding Ceres’ fruit 
 
 From wreathed gold, — while o’er him bended date, 
 
 And olive, orange, fig, and cocoa nut, [the root. 
 
 Festooned with vines, and draped with green gourds round 
 
 XLV. 
 
 On either hand the Gracchus, miniature 
 Array of honours gilded Carbo’s brow, [14] 
 
 With his young head that once, by act impure 
 Of vengeful Sylla, his great father’s foe, 
 
 Bedecked a pole i’ th’ forum, for a show — 
 
 Jugurtha’s conqueror’s son. [15] With these appeared 
 Full many a Roman ghost that fied from blow 
 By bestial Caesars threatened : souls that feared 
 Not death itself; but — to die tyrant-massacred. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Nor lacked there Roman spirits of the days 
 When Rome and her old gods of friendly faith 
 Were nullified by new Byzantium’s blaze, 
 
 And its exclusive creed. Crowned with sere wreath, 
 On mouldering columns, Photius sat, who death — 
 
 A freeman’s death — preferred, to humbling loss 
 Of self-respect, — giving away his breath 
 When false Justinian bade old Pagan gloss [16] 
 
 Should cease, and all the world bow down before the Cross. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 Rome’s elder terror, by the Pontic king 
 Appeared — the one-eyed Carthaginian : 
 
 Athwart, he sat, upon a living thing 
 Of monster form — a seat equestrian, 
 
 Blending an elephant whose forehead’s span 
 Was vast as Hindoo Ganesa’s ; a pard 
 With hide besprent, like that gruff Scythian 
 By Ceres changed ; [17] and feet of beast that marred 
 The seer, but halted, by the ass, the corpse to guard.[l^ 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 175 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Fast by the thrones of Saul and Zimri lay 
 A mass of hideousness, where crocodile, 
 
 And snake, and scorpion, and tarantula, 
 
 Were blent into one reptile, huge and vile — 
 
 The dorsual seat of that old peer of guile 
 Who hanged himself because the Archite’s rede 
 Was ta’en by rebel Absalom.[19]. On pile 
 Of hybrid life — half-bull, half-desart-steed — 
 
 Sat Eleazar, of the Maccabees’ bold breed. [20] 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 And Razis [21] near him sat, on monster beast 
 More fell, commingling tiger, wolf, and bear, 
 
 With claws and beak of bird that maketh quest 
 For dead men’s flesh. Where the Byzantines were 
 Sat Arbogast the Frank [22] with savage stare 
 Leaning upon a shape half-stag, half-hound. 
 
 And other suicides assembled there, 
 
 Of Gallic mien, gazed haughtily, and frowned, 
 
 As if they liked not well the regal pomps ground : 
 
 L. 
 
 These shapes, methought, were they whom, late, I saw, 
 When, wandering over Freedom’s desert plain, 
 
 I came unto a mound, and stood with awe 
 To see the hoary cirque — the ruined fane. — 
 
 And other spirits which had filled the train 
 Of my night-visions I, again, beheld : 
 
 The bards were there from Phantasy’s domain — 
 
 The mystic grove ; and with these sprites of eld 
 Came, now, a late-born host which in that region dwelled. 
 
 LI. 
 
 And, from the Mount of Vanity, methought 
 The Indian and the Agrigentine seemed 
 To be remet, — while they had with them brought 
 Of spirits I beheld when erst I dreamed, 
 
 A host whose essences defiance gleamed 
 For contest of the soul. Nor lacked they feud 
 For long : mind-syllables, terse, vig’rous, beamed 
 Forth from the spiritual similitude 
 Of the great Pontic king, — who thus debate renewed :■ 
 
176 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII. 
 
 Spirits ! who waits preamble, or proclaim 
 Of thesis, since to all our argument 
 Is known ? The Spartan saith this goodly frame 
 Of kingly pomps Nature hath sagely blent 
 With typic forms — on our instruction bent — 
 
 And foretells utter change — Equality, 
 
 Knowledge, and Joy, for ever confluent 
 Through Hades ; and for Earth like destiny. 
 
 Say, Spirits, with the Spartan’s do your thoughts agree ? — 
 
 LIII. 
 
 Thus Mithridates spake ; and, straight, the theme 
 Cleanthes seized. With meek and modest grace 
 At Zeno’s feet he sat, and diadem 
 Or tiar had seemed mockery to place 
 Upon his brow — so brightly beamed each trace 
 Of mental nobleness through the rare veil 
 That clad his essense. In that mystic space, 
 
 When he arose, kings’ splendours seemed to pale 
 In glory, ’fore his soul’s refulgence spiritual. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Monarchs, and bards, and sages old, — he said ; 
 
 1 utter first, my humble sentence brief, 
 
 That spirits of more reach, and skilled to thread 
 The maze of symbol, type, and hieroglyph, 
 
 May follow, more at large. I yield belief 
 To Nature’s sage interpreters of things 
 When Reason guides their theme ; but, for my chief 
 In wisdom I acknowledge none who clings, 
 
 Fondly, to worship of his own imaginings. 
 
 LV. 
 
 If Reason guide the Spartan, it is well : 
 
 If Phantasy, I heed him not : unskilled, 
 
 Myself, in riddles, I will simply tell 
 My judgment from within. On earth, I toiled 
 A menial slave by night, [23] my toil beguiled 
 With sweet thoughts how the morning would renew 
 Wisdom’s boon nurture, that by day distilled 
 From Zeno’s spirit on my soul like dew, 
 
 Until my being to intellectual stature grew. 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 177 
 
 LVI. 
 
 And, if the Past I could live o’er again, 
 
 The joys of wisdom to the gauds of power 
 1 would prefer: ev’n now, while in my ken 
 Glow regal grandeurs, how they seem to cower 
 Before the spirit’s nobler, loftier dower — 
 
 Wisdom and virtue ! Monarchs, to offend 
 I seek not ; but that changes o’er ye lour 
 l also prophecy ! Man will ascend 
 To Truth, and soon unto false glory cease to bend. 
 
 LVII. 
 
 Mind is awake, in Hades ; while, on earth, 
 
 Crowds ask aloud what truthful reverence 
 Mere shew can ask; demand the proof of worth 
 From Privilege that lolls in indolence 
 While Poverty toils on with pang intense 
 Of bodily hunger ; and proclaim, in ire, 
 
 Their stern resolve, that throned magnificence — 
 
 The dullard son derives from doltish sire — 
 
 With conquerors’ pomps, late won by murder, shall expire ! — 
 
 LVII J. 
 
 He ceased ; and Appius, Rome’s old lecher vile, 
 
 With base effrontery uprose to jeer. 
 
 But indignation burst from regal pile 
 
 O’ th’ Pontic king, that whelmed with shame and fear 
 
 The rude one, and subdued his scoff and sneer : 
 
 And albeit Nero Mithridates blamed, 
 
 Yet, on the lewd decemvir fell severe 
 And ireful glances from a host ashamed 
 To call him Roman — till he fled forth spirit-maimed ! — 
 
 LIX. 
 
 When, lo ! a filthy and obscene baboon 
 Upgrew in Appius’ seat ; while kings aghast, 
 Dumb-founded, gazed to see the creature soon 
 Take up the Roman’s staff, he, in his haste, 
 
 Let fall, and mock the pomp of each dynast 
 That there held golden sceptre ! All were mute 
 With wonderment — till darkness overcast 
 The throne where lately sat the dissolute 
 Old Roman, — and then vanished throne and salvage brute: 
 12 N 
 
178 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 While, in the rainbowed sky a giant hand 
 Appeared, and pointed to the throneless void, 
 
 Filling the wonder-stricken sceptred band 
 With deepest dread. Lycurgus, meanwhile, eyed 
 The change with smiles, — yet not as one that joyed 
 To view the Roman’s sufferings, or his fall, — 
 
 But, seeming glad to know one shape destroyed 
 Among those images of human thrall — 
 
 As earnest that like change should pass upon them alb 
 
 lxt. 
 
 He spake not ; but the monarch-spirits gazed 
 With awe upon the Spartan’s volumed look, 
 
 And read his thought. — 
 
 By splendours unbedazed, 
 
 By prophecies or fears of change unshook, 
 
 The aweless Carthaginian silence broke : — 
 
 Will this strange visitation check the boast 
 Of haughty Rome, — he said, — this vengeance-stroke 
 Of the high Powers that rule this mystic coast 
 Offended with the Roman monster’s obscene ghost ? 
 
 LXII. 
 
 Such was Rome’s progeny in her fresh youth — 
 
 Her age of public virtue — when, with vaunt 
 Of kingly vipers crushed in their young growth, 
 
 Her victor plebeians swelled their choral chaunt ! 
 
 What wonder, then, that her exuberant 
 Maturity conceived gigantic forms 
 Of turpitude, so foully miscreant, 
 
 That Nature shuddered to reveal their germs, 
 
 And, while their mother bore them, darkened earth with 
 
 [storms ! [24] 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 And shall their images sit here enthroned 
 With virtuous shapes, while thus the Powers Divine 
 On one take vengeance? Will they thus confound 
 Desert with baseness? Not from typic sign, 
 Abounding in this mystical confine, 
 
 I prophesy ; but confidence in Right, 
 
 ’Spite of reverses the Gods intertwine 
 With Virtue’s course, fills me with bright 
 Anticipations they will yet the Good requite. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 179 
 
 LXI V. 
 
 That ruin threatens Thrones of bloated vice, 
 
 I doubt not ; but, that Good with III shall fade, 
 
 1 credit not the Spartan aruspice. 
 
 Thus Hannibal the gathering fears allayed 
 Of some ; but rendered guiltier Thrones afraid 
 Their fall was near, — so that with fiendish rage 
 These swelled : but judgment soon the tempest stayed ! 
 Two of Rome’s swoln, embruted lineage 
 Evanished from the view of king, and bard, and sage ; 
 
 LXV. 
 
 And, for brief season, upon Nero’s throne 
 A tiger sat upright, with robe bedecked, 
 
 And glared upon a swine Bonosus’ crown 
 That wore, and held its brutal shape erect 
 Upon the drunkard’s seat. Each did affect 
 Despotic airs, sceptred and diademmed, 
 
 Till, by the lesson did his pride detect 
 Full many a ghost that there sat crowned and gemmed ; 
 And some within their essence royalty condemned. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Anon, fell darkness on the mimic brutes ; 
 
 And then a void was left where each robed beast 
 Had sat with mock-monarchal attributes ; 
 
 While, from the roof, huge pendent hands impressed 
 Deep dread — pointing to either space divest 
 Of throne and image — that the Spartan’s word 
 Might soon be signally made manifest ; 
 
 And silence chill, such as in sepulchred 
 Earth- regions dwells, did long that hall of Thrones begird. — 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 At length, uprose the Gracchus, and with calm 
 And graceful act, but look that inly glowed 
 With noblest fervour, laid aside his palm, 
 
 While thus, in generous tide his accents flowed : 
 Spirits, that sit mysteriously endowed 
 With sign of sovereignty, I now conjure 
 Your essences by these strange judgments bowed, 
 
 Say, — if it would Man’s general bliss ensure, — 
 
 Could ye bemoan your empty splendour’s forfeiture ? 
 
 n 2 
 
180 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX VIII. 
 
 What veritable good, in your proud joy 
 On earth, could ye possess ? While hunger keen 
 Tortured the Poor, did not your banquets cloy ? 
 
 Could ye, beholding ragged Misery’s mien, 
 
 Feel really happy in your grandeur’s sheen ? 
 
 While thousands wandered homeless o’er the soil, — 
 Worn, suffering, fainting, wretched, — did ye lean 
 On your soft pillows won from Labour’s spoil, 
 
 And never think with pity on the sufferer’s toil ? 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 It could not be : for ye had human hearts : 
 
 Ye knew men were your brethren, and deep thought — 
 Such as men feel when wounded conscience smarts- - 
 Must oft have stirred within ye, and have smote 
 Your bosoms with remorse, until it brought 
 Ye well-nigh to resolve ye would descend 
 From your afflictive thrones, and bring to nought 
 That human scourge — your power ; all woe-toil end ; 
 And, to lift up mankind your life-long effort lend. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Ye must have thought — to banish want and sorrow 
 Would bring the heart more truthful happiness 
 Than all the gaudy lustre ye could borrow 
 From the toil- worm, for robe and train and jess, — 
 From jewelled crown, and gold in its excess 
 But ye were held by Fate : her power restrained, 
 Controlled, benumbed your wills that yearned to bless 
 Your weeping brethren, and ye thus remained 
 Agents to work out evil, — and for evil reigned. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 But evil brings forth good, as Good, of old, 
 
 Produced Evil, — so now, when all things shew 
 The mystery of Being doth unfold 
 Some glimpses of its issue ; and the True 
 From out the hollow False doth brightly glow, 
 
 And cannot, longer, be from Man concealed, — 
 
 So now, Good shall result from Evil : woe 
 And want shall cease ; Man’s heart- ache shall be healed 
 And, in your fall, the true Elysium be revealed. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 181 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Do ye not joy at this, ev’n now, discerning 
 What potent sympathies unite old Earth 
 And Hades, — with what aspirations yearning. 
 
 Spirits in penal realm are giving birih 
 To large fraternal thoughts that wander forth 
 Diffusing faith that all shall gladness prove ? 
 
 Kings, — brothers,— stifle not the germs of worth 
 That now within ye spring! With us commove 
 To usher in the jubilee of Truth and Love ! — 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 Th’ Agrarian ceased ; and with his passionate plea 
 Enkindled, rose the Attic orator : — 
 
 O kings, can outward state ennoble ye, — 
 
 He said, — can visionary blazons more 
 Exalt ye, than the healing balm to pour 
 Of gentle goodness on your brother’s soul ? 
 
 Oh, is not goodness truly regal ? Frore 
 With gold and gems, and frowning cold control, — 
 Is he, indeed, a king, — whose heart’s unpitiful ? 
 
 LXX1V. 
 
 Is he not truly an ignoble churl 
 
 Who knows no heart-thirst for another’s weal ? — 
 
 O kings, how small the sacrifice to hurl 
 Aside these vanities, if ye could feel 
 True brotherhood with Man ! Earnest appeal 
 The generous Roman to your nobler thought 
 Hath made ; but still your essences reveal 
 Returning sternness, and returning doubt 
 Whether these judgments ruin to your thrones denote. 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Ye cleave to your old state, and still believe 
 Abandonment of shining sovereignties 
 Would argue weakness while these emblems weave 
 Assurance that your destiny defies 
 Assault from Hades’ dim confed’racies, 
 
 Lapse of duration, or foreboding seer, — 
 
 And yet, bow know ye, monarchs, that the guise 
 Of mystery which shrouds this penal sphere 
 Ye penetrate, and read with comprehension clear? 
 
182 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Before the Spartan’s augury ye spurn, 
 
 I challenge ye to answer, — while the hand 
 Of ever-fashioning Nature ye discern 
 Mingling, on earth and through this mystic land, 
 
 The frightful with the beautiful and grand — 
 
 The pleasant with the painful — woe with joy — 
 Perfection with decay : hath she thus planned 
 The universal frame for a huge toy, 
 
 That she may, endlessly, be building to destroy P 
 
 LXXVI I. 
 
 Can ye at such sage judgment, kings, arrive — 
 
 That the vast Soul of all things works in sport 
 And mockery ? Or, is all preparative 
 Of some great issue, merely ? Inexpert 
 To make a universe that shall consort 
 Each part with each, so that no blot shall mar 
 Its pure, consummate beauty, Fraud malvert 
 Its boon design, or Force diffuse foul jar 
 Through its blest harmonies — judge ye the High Gods are? 
 
 LXXVIII. 
 
 Or, rather, have they not in embryo left 
 The mighty macrocosm, [25] for some great end 
 Of all-pervasive bliss to be vouchsafed 
 Hereafter ? Powers paternal that extend 
 Their providence to all, we apprehend 
 The sovereign gods to be ; and ye will seem 
 Most like them, kings, if ye in pity bend 
 O’er earth and Hades, yearning to redeem 
 All being from woe, and render Joy and Love supreme! — 
 
 LXXIX. 
 
 Thus spake Demosthenes, while kindred glow 
 Of earnest and fraternal love suffused 
 The visage of Themistocles, and threw 
 Such glory round, that some the cause espoused 
 He rose to plead, ere language had aroused 
 
 The intellective sense his theme to scan : 
 
 As when, among earth’s orators, hath choosed, 
 From some exterior grace, each partisan 
 His favourite, ere debate proclaims the nobler man. 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 1&3 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Monarchs, your brotherhood with man I plead, — 
 
 He said : — knowing no higher theme from whence 
 To argue that your essences self- freed 
 Should be from this false supereminence: 
 
 And, if that plea prevail not, eloquence 
 I lack to charm with guileful words the mind 
 Which knows no worship for the excellence 
 Of goodness. Kings, I plead for humankind! 
 
 Aid us our race in earth and Hades to unbind! 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 It is to noblest, loftiest sacrifice 
 I call ye : sacrifice of selfish loves 
 And preferences — to swell the overbliss 
 Of all Humanity. Think ye, who proves 
 His truthful greatness thus, where’er he moves, 
 
 Shall not reap grateful reverence of more worth 
 Than all your pomps? “ Thee, brother, it behoves 
 “ Our souls to love ! — blest bringer of our mirth!’* — 
 Bliss-throngs beholding him, with smiles, ghall utter forth, 
 
 LXXXI I. 
 
 Thy glance significant, O Pontic chief! 
 
 Reminds me that on earth man’s gratitude 
 Is slow of growth, and of existence brief, — 
 
 While patriot deeds, by jealousy misviewed, 
 
 Oft, for their guerdon, yield unkindly feud. 
 
 Great spirit ! magnanimity exalts 
 Man more, far more, than power : who hath subdued 
 Revenge for injuries, and o’er the faults 
 Of brethren with compassion yearns, wins blest results. 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 I dwell not on such thoughts: if I had wrong 
 From fatherland, — O name that wak’st the thrill 
 Of tenderest love ! — wrong’s slender sense hath long 
 Evanished. But, I ask, what wrong, in will, 
 
 Or word, or act, kings bear from man ? Deep ill 
 Monarchs have wrought each other; but the race 
 Of Man hath reverenced the most imbecile 
 Of regal shapes, nor ever sought to’ abase 
 A monarch till he made his realm a charnel-place. 
 
184 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXX1V. 
 
 Nought have ye, then, to pardon ; but, to ask 
 Forgiveness, rather. Yet, to see him lay 
 His gorgeous gauds aside, and cease to bask 
 In splendours wrung from woe, would throw a ray 
 Of glory round a king so bright that they 
 Who witnessed it would deem him all-divine, 
 
 And doubt he ever had borne evil sway. 
 
 All Earth would honour him : his deed benign 
 Spirits would magnify, through Hades’ dim confine. 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 O kings, be truly noble! For the weal 
 Of All, your high volition exercise, 
 
 And burst, through Earth and Hades, the dark seal 
 Of sympathetic evil that now lies 
 On being. Aid us in the bright emprise, 
 
 Begun on earth, nor in these mystic realms 
 Deserted : for we will antagonize 
 With Wrong till vict’ry crowns our spir’tual helms, 
 And boundless love and joy the human spirit whelms! — 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 Th’ Athenian ended; and the Hebrew king 
 Raised his colossal form, with tremulous haste 
 To tell how freely he away would fling 
 All shows of grandeur, to repair the waste 
 Of human bliss and see mankind embraced 
 By boundless love. — 
 
 Kings, Shophets, seers, — he said, — 
 By ordinance Divine in Sheol placed 
 On thrones and mystic seats, what can bestead 
 The human soul from garish gauds thus round us spread ? 
 
 LXXXVI I. 
 
 If on our wills the general bliss depend, 
 
 What can withhold that now we abdicate 
 These royalties, — the reign of Evil end — 
 
 The revelry of Wrong P And, wherefore wait 
 Till some more signal judgment consternate 
 Our essences? Ye seem unmoved! and I 
 Doubt deeply whether zeal to’ emancipate 
 Tophet and Earth from penal torment’s cry, [High. 
 And suffering’s groan, will meet the smile of the Most 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 185 
 
 LXXXVIIl. 
 
 AY ben Samuel, in my sight, to pieces hewed 
 The royal Agag, whom I longed to save, 
 
 I saw that when Jehovah had a feud 
 With His poor human worm, He would not wave 
 His claim to justice; but, upon the slave 
 Who dared to step between His holy wrath 
 And the doomed victim, He would vengeance have — 
 Slow,— signal, — sure ! The Everlasting’s path 
 Who can find out? — who comprehendeth what He saith ? 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 His prophet did my humble head anoint, 
 
 And said the Lord had chosen me to rule : 
 Exterminating war God did appoint 
 On Amalek, next: — His ways are wonderful! 
 
 When I besought, at His Divine footstool, 
 
 Pardon for weakness, Agag’s holy slayer 
 Said God did not repent like man ! — How dull 
 Are our perceptions ! Did He not declare 
 Me monarch, and repent ? — He who refused my prayer ? 
 
 xc. 
 
 All, all is mystery ! I sought no throne : — 
 
 My father’s asses, as I, following, roamed 
 O’er the wide wilderness, — if on me shone 
 The cheering sun, or sterile Nature gloomed, — 
 
 A kingdom seemed to me. But 1 was doomed 
 To know the mockery of earthly bliss ! — 
 
 And is not Sheol mockery ? We are wombed 
 In dread and doubt, fearing to do amiss ; 
 
 And, to do well, lack power to burst our destinies ! — 
 
 xcx. 
 
 Abruptly, in despair, thus ended Saul, 
 
 And on his throne sank down ; while smoothly rose 
 
 Achitophel, and round the regal hall 
 
 Glanced, — then, obsequious, cringed, ere to disclose 
 
 His frauds he made essay, or to dispose 
 
 Them in the guise of truths : — 
 
 Potential Shades, 
 
 And great Regalities, — he said ; — why lose 
 In arguings vain — since mystery being pervades — 
 
 The respite to deep pain Nature for ye here spreads ? 
 
186 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XC1I. 
 
 Why thus afflict your essences with fears? 
 
 Why droop, dispirited, and pale and shrink, 
 
 As if the soul were still a thing of tears, 
 
 As when it wore earth’s clay ? What, if some think, 
 
 Or dream, that these imperial pomps shall sink 
 To nought ? Where is the doting prophet’s proof 
 Of his true inspiration? Not a link 
 Is broken that your thrones, with wonder-woof, 
 
 Blends with these columned shapes, and this supernal roof. 
 
 XCIII. 
 
 Judgment hath fallen on the guilty seats 
 
 Of some: what then? On earth stern judgments fell 
 
 On the incorrigible: guilt still meets 
 
 Its bad desert : this is nought new. Dispel 
 
 Your gloom, great kings, that in high thought excel, 
 
 Soaring beyond the crowd ! Like eagles, preen 
 
 Your splendours, and this boding prophet quell 
 
 With winged vengeance ! Shall ye suffer teen, 
 
 Because this dreaming fantast thus doth overween ? 
 
 xciv. 
 
 Monarchs are gods, in lustre and in strength : 
 
 Thrones were, and are, and shall be : they exist 
 By an eternal fitness : neither length 
 Of spiritual duration hath decreased 
 Their virtue, nor can captious casuist 
 Allege true reasons for their overthrow. 
 
 I challenge anarch revolutionist — 
 
 By thoughts of reach, not dreams — sound cause to shew 
 Why Thrones, in Sheoland on earth, to Change shall bow. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 Thou, regal Saul, spak’st of thy earthly course. 
 
 Know thou, that monarchs by good counsel stand, 
 
 And fall by evil rede. Changes, perforce, 
 
 Must come : young Comeliness will, aye, command 
 More love than Age : valour to wield the brand 
 More worship than sleek sloth : issue of joy 
 Awaiteth kingly acts in every land* 
 
 Unless the monarch doth his heart upbuoy 
 By fulsome counsel, and his own fair peace destroy. — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 187 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 Thus spake the Hebrew courtier-suicide, 
 
 And looked for plaudits ; but, the Maccabee 
 Rose up in haste, his glozing strain to chide : — 
 
 This from Rebellion’s counsellor do ye 
 Endure ? — he said ; — the flames of anarchy 
 Who blew with viperous breath — shall kings advice 
 Receive from him — the tool of Treachery P 
 Shall not the part this hoary cockatrice 
 Played, while on earth, to prove his worthlessness suffice ? 
 
 xcvii. 
 
 Oh, monarchs, nobler, holier counsel take ! 
 
 Not to wage spiritual war on the calm ghost 
 Of the Laconian, vile revenge to slake ; 
 
 N ot of your gaudy pomps to swell and boast, 
 Regardless of the souls in Tophet tossed 
 In agony, and of Earth’s myriads born 
 To pain, and in degrading cares engrossed: 
 
 Oh, treat not thus the Spartan’s words with scorn ; 
 
 If, by some deed of yours, mankind may cpase to mourn l 
 
 XCVII i. 
 
 Oh, cleave no longer to these grandeurs vague, 
 
 If they the jars apd wounds of earth prolong — 
 Slaughter and famine, pestilence and plague, 
 
 Bondage of weaker brethren to the strong, 
 
 Envy and hatred, robbery and wrong! 
 
 The bards on Judah’s mountains, where we drew 
 The sword against our tyrants, in their song 
 Foretold Earth, one day, should be born anew, 
 
 And smile with brotherhood of all — Gentile and Jew. 
 
 xcix. 
 
 And if, in Sheol, the Danaian’s mind 
 Survey the future with prophetic glance — 
 
 Discerning inmost sympathies that bind 
 Earth’s thrones with yours — the deep significance 
 Perceiving of strange shapes that but enhance 
 The wildered wonder of inferior souls — 
 
 Monarchs, resist not His high Puissance 
 Who universal destiny controls, 
 
 And, to His chosen ones, the fatal scroll unrols. — 
 
188 
 
 TJIK PURGATORY 
 
 C. 
 
 Thus Eleazar spake; and Nicocles, 
 
 The Paphian king, essayed, with gentle zeal, 
 
 To aid like counsel: — 
 
 That the stronger seize 
 The w’eak, — he said, — and bruised nations feel 
 The conqueror’s burthen ; that victorious steel 
 Bereaves the widow and the orphan child 
 Of earthly hope and joy ; that human weal 
 Is sacrificed to Power, and Man is spoiled 
 Of every good, by Wrong; proofs Earth, for ages, piled. 
 
 ci. 
 
 And, while on earth thrones stand, monarchs will vie 
 With monarchs, in excess of pomp and power; 
 
 Slavery and woe conquest will multiply ; 
 
 And Death, in crescent shapes, mankind devour. 
 
 Not before dreaming oracles I cower, 
 
 Fearing more pain from ruin; but to purge 
 Hades from present pain, and speed Earth’s hour 
 Of jubilee, brothers, like suit I urge, 
 
 That we in equal state these sceptred splendours merge ! — 
 
 CII. 
 
 And I, spake Otho, join the fervid prayer, 
 
 And plead for preference of the general good 
 
 To sordid selfishness, and empty glare 
 
 Of unsubstantial shows : our brotherhood 
 
 With man demands it : while our thrones have stood 
 
 Thus mystically radiant, clouds of gloom 
 
 Have enwrapt millions, men shed brothers’ blood, 
 
 And Toil’s child found no refuge but the tomb ! 
 
 Spirits, to quit these pomps, I give my instant doom ! 
 
 cm. 
 
 Lo ! while the Cyprian and the Roman spoke, 
 Transcendant glories decked their glowing brows, 
 
 And joy-beams from the Spartan’s count’nance broke, 
 That seemed a peerless light to circumfuse 
 On thrones and statues. Inly to arouse 
 His vengefulness, Achitophel essayed ; 
 
 But utterance failed; and, shuddering with strange throes 
 Of some new torture that upon him preyed — 
 
 A ghastly sight he stood; while kings looked on dismayed. 
 
of sure IDES 
 
 189 
 
 CIV. 
 
 Distorted grew his visage, limbs, and trunk — 
 
 Though spiritual essence — till they joined 
 His reptile seat ; and into it he shrunk 
 With grin horrific, and, with it combined, 
 
 Crawled, prostrate : hybrid monster undefined 
 In loathsome hideousness: a shape more strange 
 Than night-mared gourmand’s glut-vexed brain e’er 
 Or madman formed, at full of moon, or change ; [coined ; 
 Or bard, with frightfull’st phrenzies smit, could misarrange! 
 
 cv. 
 
 Slow waned the uncouth horror-spawn from sight 
 Of spirits, who, with stark marmorean look — 
 
 Such as, at banquet, did the countenance blight 
 Of Pelops’ sire [25] — sat, with soul-palsy strook: 
 
 And with such goading sense of self-rebuke 
 Ached the Cathaian and Assyrian kings, 
 
 Nile’s queen, and paramour, — they could not brook 
 To be beheld, — but hid, like guilty things, 
 
 Their faces : smitten with remorseful torturings. 
 
 cvi. 
 
 Kings’ faces, now, with apprehension deep 
 Were filled, and some, to wailing words gave vent : 
 When, like a veteran seaman who would keep 
 Undaunted heart, though sails and cordage rent, 
 
 And rudder broken, render impotent 
 The pilot’s strength and skill, — and fear and grief 
 Burst from young sailors’ tongues with eloquent 
 Expression of despair, — the Pontic chief, 
 
 Though shook, thus sought, with speech, to minister relief: 
 
 cvn. 
 
 Spirits, I rise not to renew debate 
 On human rights, nor arguings to gainsay 
 Of those who favour new and equal state 
 In Hades and on earth. Let him who may 
 Contend ’gainst Nature’s impulses that sway 
 The soul to tender and fraternal thoughts — 
 
 If Custom did not blight them in our clay, 
 
 And taint the spirit’s essence. No cold doubts 
 Have I, that Men* as bro hers, share like attributes: 
 
190 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CVI11. 
 
 Neither cleave I to kingship from regard 
 To Nature’s great distinctions, though she gives 
 With choice, not blindly : genius of the bard 
 To one ; deep reach unto the sage who dives 
 Into her mysteries ; prerogatives 
 Of leadership, not less, to some who wield 
 A natural power o’er men — a strength that lives 
 And germs within, compelling men to yield 
 Unto its forceful energy where’er repealed: 
 
 cix. 
 
 I dwell not to repeat what hath been told — 
 
 How nature thus elects, yet doth impress, 
 
 Each human essence with so like a mould, 
 
 That all are brothers in their helplessness — 
 
 Children of Fate — driving to refugeless 
 Despair their kind, or being, themselves, forth driven. 
 Maugre these thoughts, if mankind may possess 
 General beatitude when thrones are riven 
 From their foundations — let the judgment now be given ! 
 
 cx. 
 
 Wherefore this pallor, brother Thrones ? Why faint 
 And fear ? When we threw off our mortal load 
 And gained these shores, unlike what earth-dreams paint 
 Of life beyond the grave, we were endowed, 
 
 At torture’s lapse, with pomps, in kingly mode, 
 
 Ere we could choose. What guilt, then, have we nursed, 
 By wearing these regalities ? what rod 
 Deserved P in what new penalties amerced 
 Shall spirits writhe ? in what new regions be dispersed ? 
 
 CXI. 
 
 And wherefore fear, if such, for Nature’s sport, 
 
 Be destinies that wait us ? Let us meet 
 Them calmly, since we cannot controvert 
 Our fate. 1 pause — to see upon his seat, 
 
 Neither unsceptred nor discrowned, as yet, 
 
 Imperial Otho, and the Cyprian prince. 
 
 Wait they the Spartan’s sign ? Why doth his threat 
 Tarry in its fulfiment ? Monarchs, since [vince ? 
 
 Thrones fade not, wherefore should mere bodements us con- 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 191 
 
 CXIf. 
 
 Wise men use omens for their ends, on earth, 
 
 While fools and weaklings see, or hear, and quake. 
 Star-gazers saw a comet, at my birth ; 
 
 And, at my father’s death, I saw it shake 
 Its fiery hair, as it the world would wake 
 To see a king. The double omen seived 
 To fix expectant looks on me, and make 
 My name, itself, a host. That knowledge nerved 
 My soul to combat Rome: my courage, else, had swerved. 
 
 Pff] 
 
 CXI II. 
 
 Not to the fiery star, — but, to kind rule 
 I trusted to infix my subjects’ love ; 
 
 And, while I left each astrologic fool 
 To prate of hosts, he saw in heaven above, 
 
 Asia’s vast swarms I sought, on earth, to move 
 Against all-grasping Rome. Knowledge and Will 
 Enable men and spirits oft to prove 
 Superior to all circumstance of ill ; 
 
 Ay, render them, by Fate itself, invincible. 
 
 cxiv. 
 
 Kings, if we quail, we draw destruction down : 
 
 Resolve preserves our state. Thrones, I aver, 
 
 The energy of will upholds each throne 
 
 In Hades, nor can prescient sorcerer 
 
 These dazzling seats from their foundations stir, 
 
 If we put forth resolve. — 
 
 He ceased, disturbed ; 
 
 And though his words of resolution were, 
 
 His strength was weakness. No applause reverbed 
 Through the wide hall; for, apprehension thought absorbed. 
 
 CXV. 
 
 Deep silence reigned, until the Spartan rose, 
 
 With godlike dignity, and thus began: — 
 
 Spirits, I triumph to foresee the close 
 Of Error’s reign. Kings hold their last divan : 
 
 W T hen next beneath this arch cerulean 
 We met, All will be equal ! But I cease 
 To prophesy ; and calmly trace the plan 
 Of sovereign Nature, since she seeks your peace, 
 
 Your joy, Spirits ! that henceforth, endless, shall increase. 
 
192 
 
 THK PURGATORY 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 Error, from human ignorance darkly sprang. 
 
 As children misname things, and shout or shriek, 
 
 From pleasure or affright, so mankind sang, 
 
 In rhapsodies of joy, the golden streak 
 Of morn ; and, when they heard the thunder speak, 
 Bowed down in awe, and wept. Infants in mind, 
 They marvelled, and made gods of visage meek 
 Or terrible ; and, then, to them assigned 
 Rule o’er the sun and cloud, the sky, and sea, and wind. 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 Thrones, likewise, sprang from human ignorance. 
 Nature’s rude elements presented war 
 For Man : rocks, earth-flames, ocean’s vast expanse, 
 Storms, forests, savage beasts, were found to mar 
 Man’s ease or rest : on every side a bar 
 Opposed itself, alike to further good, 
 
 Or present peace. Then, he an exemplar 
 Was held who overcame by hardihood, 
 
 Lion or bear, horrors of cavern, flame, or flood. 
 
 CXVIIi. 
 
 Such were old Earth’s primeval monarchs : kings, 
 Leaders, by courage, holding simple sway — 
 
 If sway they held — by useful compassings 
 Of larger means for nourishing man’s clay. 
 
 0 Mithridates, when I heard thee say 
 Some were born natural leaders, unto these 
 
 1 turned — the chiefs of patriarchal day-— 
 
 Comparing them with lords that Earth now sees : 
 
 The puny hildings [28] man approaches on his knees ! 
 
 cxix. 
 
 Cities were built, and man subdued the soil. 
 
 But, now, Craft grew, and seized on mystery — 
 
 Life, death, sun, stars — all that the sons of toil 
 Saw without comprehending ; and, with glee, 
 
 Secret but strong, made Man a devotee 
 Become, credent and humble — reverent laud 
 Rendering unto the Priest as lowlily 
 As to the gods this minister of fraud 
 Said he heard speak, — while men him listed, overawed 
 
OF SUICipES. 
 
 193 
 
 cxx. 
 
 Then, between Priest and King grew contest rife 
 For mastership; and Ganges and old Nile, 
 
 Whose sacred servants foremost led the strife, 
 
 Beheld the proof, in many a mighty pile 
 That decked their marges, how completely Guile 
 Could triumph over Strength. But, in the end, 
 
 Altar and Throne felt it unworth the while 
 To waste each other, — since, they shrewdly kenne 
 The prey enough for both : so King called Priest — his 
 
 Long, dreary, miserable years have fled, 
 
 Since the foul compact first was ratified', 
 
 By Priestcraft placing on throned Kingship’s head, 
 With hands in reeking blood of victim dyed, 
 
 The gaud of gold — the sign of kingly pride : 
 
 Long, dreary, suffering, weeping, wailing years. 
 
 Oft have the bruised and trampled sufferers tried 
 To rise ; but the Priest’s curse woke inward fears, 
 And they bowed down again unto their toil with t,ears ! 
 
 cxxn. 
 
 Ye t, in some climes, the sufferers dared a deed 
 Of glorious boldness : breaking Kingship’s chain, 
 
 And, — standing upright, from their fetters freed, — 
 Sang songs of joy that o’er the purple main 
 Floated in triumph, till the startling strain 
 Kings heard in other lands, and called their slaves 
 To arm, and quell the sacrilegious train, 
 
 And, often, when their menials crossed the waves, 
 
 They gained, in patriot-land, not conquest — but, their 
 
 [graves. 
 
 cxxm. 
 
 But, Treason germed, even in Freedom’s womb ; 
 
 And Power and Craft were born again— -the twin 
 
 Ubiquities of Evil that still gloom 
 
 The bleeding world, and widely o’er it win 
 
 Accursed sway. Thus, ever to begin 
 
 Anew was Freedom’s struggle; and the proud 
 
 Duality of Thraldom did but grin 
 
 And mock, at length, thinking the strugglers cowed 
 
194 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CXX1V. 
 
 Hence, out of Evil, Good hath grown : for, now, 
 
 Good shall begin to overcome. The strong 
 Become remiss, the weak to overthrow 
 Their masters, and redeem themselves from wrong 
 Safely aspire. Thus, Right its sinews strung 
 Afresh while Might securely slept, or woke 
 For dalliance and debauch : thus Right, grown young 
 And strong, by hardship, will throw off the yoke 
 Of hoary Might too palsied to withstand the shock. 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 Say ye, Right’s triumph, like a dream, shall fade, 
 ’Neath swift rewaking vigour of throned Power? 
 Monarchs, be not deceived ! Right, now, hath aid 
 From Knowledge — hid by priests in secret bower, 
 
 And when thence ’scaped, caught, and to dungeon-tower 
 By them condemned — yea, to the fiery flame ! 
 
 They knew not of her high immortal dower — 
 
 The veritable Phoenix — whom to tame, 
 
 Or to destroy, will ever mock old priestly aim ! 
 
 CXXVI. 
 
 Lo ! she hath ta’en young Freedom by the hand, 
 
 And, in the strength and comeliness of youth 
 Supplanting Craft and Power in every land, 
 
 And heralding the reign of Love and Truth, 
 
 They go ! Yet little reck they of the growth 
 Of Right and Knowledge, who the glorious pair 
 Regard not : the besotted shapes uncouth 
 That dream, like age-crampt spiders in their lair, , 
 Their cobweb safe, though it hath grown asport unto the air. 
 
 CXXVI i. 
 
 And ye, in Hades, monarchs, though beholding 
 Judgments on monstrous vice, are slow to yield. 
 Meanwhile, on earth, like judgments are unfolding ; 
 For, thus, in mystic sympathy upsealed, 
 
 Of mortal men and spirits unannealed 
 The destinies remain ; and, soon — though Might, 
 Counting her hirelings trapping’d, hors’d, and steeled, 
 The judgments mocks to scorn — a total blight 
 On Power, and Craft, and lordly Privilege, shall light. 
 
OF 8U1CIPES. 
 
 195 
 
 CXXVIII. 
 
 Ye by your own great deed, kings, can avert 
 The threatened ruin. Let the glowing themes 
 Of brotherhood, before ye urged, exhort 
 Ye to denude your spirits of their dreams 
 Of selfish good — to cast your diadems 
 And sceptres down — resolved the grand emprise 
 To aid of glorious Goodness ! I see beams 
 Of high resolve from forth your essence rise : 
 
 Though, still, in some, old Prejudice doth agonize ! 
 
 cxxix. 
 
 How vain that agony ! The strains of truth 
 And loving earnestness, full souls have poured 
 Forth to your thought, shall work within ye ruth 
 For human woe; and, soon, resolve matured 
 Shall be within ye to make firm accord 
 With Mercy's gentle champions : for, it hath 
 Been here proclaimed, that some have long explored 
 The way td end Man's misery, strife, and wrath, 
 
 And bring in Peace, — if, happ'ly, they might find the 
 
 And, brothers, here we solemnly obtest 
 The Sovereignties of Nature that the toil 
 We will not end, till Men and spirits blest 
 Hold general jubilee ! — 
 
 He said ; — and, while 
 He stretched aloft his hand, — from motley pile 
 And throne, great souls arose, and instant raised 
 A hand aloft — each with a godlike smile ! — 
 
 And light empyreal from each Essence blazed, 
 Until I woke, — with the bright vision soul-bedazed ! 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza 3. — Six human beings underwent capital punish" 
 merit in front of Stafford Gaol during the two years I remained 
 in it. The entire procedure in any one instance, of course, I 
 could not witness ; on one occasion, only, — when, on account 
 of the early hour and season of the year, I had not been re- 
 moved from my night-cell, — I beheld the grim preface to the 
 legal butchery. Without repeating the testimonies of re- 
 flecting men who have attended executions, as- to the harden- 
 ing effect of those savage spectacles, — I will just observe that 
 while the sound of the death-bell for the first execution filled 
 me and my fellow-prisoners with paroxysms of distress, — on 
 the second, third, and fourth occasions, we became compara- 
 tively unconcerned. And, when I was left a solitary pri- 
 soner, the sound of the death-bell for the last time, created a 
 few bitter thoughts of the abhorrent and uncivilized nature of 
 the impending tragedy ; but a kind of careless disgust fol- 
 lowed, from the instant reflection that all my dislike of the 
 brutal transaction, was vain. And, within ten minutes after 
 the death-bell had ceased, I actually caught myself humming 
 “ The Banks and Braes o’ bonny Doon !” Now, a more sensi- 
 tive and excitable human creature than myself, perhaps, 
 does not exist : but there is the honest fact— such as startled 
 me by its strangeness, at the time : — let the advocates for 
 the usefulness of capital punishments, as i( impressive moral 
 lessons,” make what they can of it. 
 
 [2] Stanza 6. — Compare Exodus, Chap. 21, verse xxiv., and 
 Matthew, chap 5, and verses xxxviii, xxxix. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 197 
 
 [3] Stanza 22. — “God became their Deity.” — The esta- 
 olished etymology of the word “ God,” is that which derives 
 it from the Saxon adjective signifying good , as I have given it 
 in the text. But there are scholars who doubt of the correct- 
 ness of this derivation. “ The chief who conducted the Goths 
 into Scandinavia appears by his Gothic names Odin, Wodan, 
 and Godan, to have been confounded with the Deity, because 
 his name, like the Persian Udu, the Gothic Aud, denoted 
 power;” .... “The Bodh, Yoda, or Yogd of the Indians, 
 Tartars, and Russians, the But, Bud, Wud, of the Persians, 
 and idolatrous Arabs, the Qud or Khoda of all the tribes of 
 Turkey throughout Tartary, the Godami (Gaudama) of the 
 Malays and Ceylonese, appear to be merely different pro- 
 nunciations of Wodan, especially as bodh or boodh in Sanscrit 
 and the common dialects of Hindostan is used for our Wed- 
 nesday or Odin’s day.” — Thomson’s “ Observations intro- 
 ductory to a work on English Etymology : John Murray, 
 Albemarle Street, 1818.” — See also Godfrey Higgins’s “Ana- 
 calypsis.” 
 
 [4] Stanza 25. — The ascription of the attribute “modern 
 Stagyrite” to the mitred author of the celebrated “Analogy” 
 may be an untasteful anachronism (though all anachronisms 
 are not untasteful) ; but I could not resist the wish to register 
 my conviction, in some form, that of all reasoners for the 
 truth of written Revelation, Butler is the most potent. 
 
 [5] Stanza 37.-- That bees swarmed on the mouth of the 
 infant Plato, as an angury of the sweetness of his future elo- 
 quence, is a well known Greek story : a similar relation is 
 made of Pindar’s infancy. 
 
 [6] Stanza 38. — Demosthenes, in fear of being delivered up 
 to Antipater and Craterus, fled to the temple of Neptune in 
 Calauria, and commited suicide by sucking poison from a 
 quill, which he carried about with him in the expectation 
 that, one day, he would be driven to desperation. 
 
 [7] Stanza 40. — Themistocles, having fled to the court of 
 
198 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 Artaxerxes, after his banishment from Athens, and being 
 taken into high favour, was requested by the Persian monarch 
 to conduct a war against Greece. He committed suicide (by 
 “ drinking bull’s blood,” it is said) rather than bear arms 
 against his native country. 
 
 [8] Stanza 41. — Dioeus of Megalopolis, general of the 
 Achaean league, slew himself, when he found it impossible to 
 resist the legions of Rome : Pausanias, 7. c. 16. 
 
 [9] Stanza 41. — Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, I find, it 
 was not , who committed suicide, but Zeno of Elea, the dis- 
 ciple of Parmenides. Others say, he was put to death by 
 being pounded in a mortar, for attempting to deliver his 
 country from the tyrant Nearchus, after biting off his tongue 
 and spitting it in the face of his torturer, The facts of this 
 suicide were in my mind, but I had forgot the identity of the 
 person, and had no means, in prison, of rectifying my error. 
 
 [10] Stanza 42. — Cato of Utica, who professed the Stoic 
 philosophy, will be known to every English reader as a 
 suicide, by Addison’s fine tragedy. 
 
 [11] Stanza 42. — Marcus Curtius, according to the mythic 
 Roman story, threw himself, armed and mounted, into a gulf 
 which had suddenly opened in the forum. The oracle had 
 said that it would close when what was most precious in 
 Rome was thrown into it ; and it did close, says the story, 
 when patriotic virtue was thus sacrificed. 
 
 [12] Stanza 43. — Brutus and Cassius, after the battle of 
 Philippi, each, alike in fear that the other was killed, com • 
 mitted suicide by running upon the sword of his freed-man. 
 
 [13] Stanza 44. — Caius Gracchus, ten years after the as- 
 sassination of his elder brother Tiberius, finding it impossible 
 to escape the vengeance of the patricians whom he had 
 humbled, also committed suicide by running upon the sword 
 of his slave, Epicrates. Statues were erected to the memory 
 
NOTES TO BOOK TME SIXTH. 
 
 199 
 
 of these proposers of the “ Agrarian law,” (or plan for the 
 division of land among the people) after their death ; and 
 their mother, Cornelia boasted that she was the happiest of 
 Roman matrons, in having given birth to such sons. 
 
 [14] Stanza 45. — Carbo, the orator, according to Cicero, 
 killed himself because he could not endure to behold the 
 vices of his countrymen. This kind of suicide has been long 
 out of fashion in the world. 
 
 [15] Stanza 45. — The younger Marius. — For affirmation of 
 his suicide see Appian de Beilis Civilibus, lib. 1, c. 94. 
 
 [16] Stanza 46.— Photius. — “ A secret remnant of Pagans, 
 who still lurked in the most refined and most rustic condition 
 of mankind, excited the indignation of the Christians, who 
 were perhaps unwilling that any strangers should be witnesses 
 of their intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the in- 
 quisitor of the faith, and his diligence soon discovered in the 
 court and city, the magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and 
 sophists, who still cherished the superstition of the (Greeks. 
 They were sternly informed that they must chuse, without 
 delay, between the displeasure of Jupiter or Justinian, and 
 that their aversion to the gospel could no longer be disguised 
 under the scandalous mask of indifference or impiety. The 
 patrician Photius, perhaps alone, was resolved to die like his 
 ancestors : he enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, 
 and left his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with igno- 
 miny the lifeless corpse of the fugitive.” — Gibbon, chap. 47. 
 
 [17] Stanza 47. — “A pard, with hide besprent, like that 
 gruff Scythian by Ceres changed — Lyncus. — Ovid. Metam., 
 lib. 5., v. 660. To Ovid’s simple expression, “Lynca Ceres 
 fecit,” — it is added in the notes to Lemaire’s edition, “Hy- 
 ginus, fab. 259 : Ceres eum convertit in lyncem varii coloris 
 ut ipse varise mentis exstiterat.” 
 
 [18] Stanza 48. — “And feet of beast that marred the seer,’’ 
 &c. — See 1 Kings, 13 chap. xxiv. xxv. 
 
200 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 [19] Stanza 48. — “ And Absalom and all the men of Israel 
 said, The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the 
 
 counsel of Ahithophel And when Ahithophel saw that 
 
 his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, 
 and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his house- 
 hold in order, and hanged himself. ,, 2 Sam. 16 chap. — 
 Suicides, it seems, had ‘‘method in their madness,” even in 
 those days. 
 
 [20] Stanza 48. — Eleazar the 4 Maccabee, (1 Maccab. 6 chap.) 
 who “put himself in jeopardy, to the end he might deliver 
 his people,” by slaying Antiochus, (though he only succeeded 
 in slaying Antiochus* elephant,) is usually classed as a suicide, 
 by writers on that subject. 
 
 [21] Stanza 49. — Razis. — See 2nd Maccabees, ch. 14., v. 37 
 — 46, for an account of his wild suicide. 
 
 [22] Stanza 49. — “Arbogastes, after the loss of a battle 
 ( won by Theodosius ), in which he had discharged the duties of 
 a soldier and a general, wandered several days among the 
 mountains. B ut when he was convinced that his cause was 
 desperate, and his escape impracticable, the intrepid bar- 
 barian imitated the example of the ancient Romans, and 
 turned his sword against his own breast/* — Gibbon, chap. 27. 
 
 [23] Stanza 55. — “ On earth, I toiled a menial slave by 
 
 night.** — Cleanthes, is a noble Greek example of mind tri- 
 umphing over difficulties. He was at first a “ fisty-cuffer,” — 
 as the old translators phrase it, in the edition of Diogenes 
 Laertius “made English by several hands:” 1696 ; — “but 
 coming to Athens, with no more than four drachmas in his 
 pocket, and meeting with Zeno, he betook himself most 
 sedulously to the study of Philosophy, &c.*’ “ By night (says 
 
 Enfield, who renders Laertius more elegantly) he drew water 
 as a common labourer in the public gardens, that he might 
 have leisure in the day-time, to attend the schools of philo- 
 sophy. The Athenian citizens observing that though he 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 201 
 
 appeared strong and healthy, he had no visible means of sub- 
 sistence, summoned him before the court of Areopagus, ac- 
 cording to the custom of the city, to give an account of his 
 manner of living. Upon this he produced the gardener for 
 whom he drew water, and a woman for whom he ground 
 meal, as witnesses to prove that he subsisted by the honest 
 labour of his hands. The judges of the court were so struck 
 with admiration of this singular example of industry and 
 perseverance, that they ordered ten mince to be paid him 
 out of the public treasury, — which, however, Zeno would not 
 
 suffer him ^ to accept Cleanthes was for 
 
 many years so poor that he was obliged to write the heads of 
 his master’s lectures upon shells and bones, for want of 
 money to buy paper.” — The suicide of this philosopher, at a 
 very advanced age, was singularly quiet and yet heroic. His 
 physicians recommended fasting for some disease with which 
 he was afflicted ; and having abstained from food for two 
 days, although he had thus subdued his disorder, he refused to 
 eat again, saying that since he had travelled so far towards the 
 end of life he would not go back again, — and, accordingly 
 died by voluntary “ total-abstinence.” — The testimonies to 
 the elevated morality of his life are abundant. 
 
 [24] Stanza 62. — The last lines of this stanza were com- 
 posed under an impression that an earthquake or violent 
 tempest signalised the birth of Nero, Caligula, Domitian, 
 Elagabulus, or some one of the monsters who presided over 
 the Roman world. Memory, it seems, betrayed me ; and I 
 had no means of correcting my inaccuracy, in prison. — The 
 mistake, however, does not seem of such importance as to 
 demand that I strike out the lines of the stanza, or substitute 
 others for them. 
 
 [25] Stanza 78. — Macrocosm , great world : microcosm , little 
 world. Emphatic terms, which, in Greek philosophy, were, 
 used to denote the Universe, and Man. 
 
 [26] Stanza 105. — “ Pelops’ sire,” Tantalus, wishing to try 
 
202 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE SIXTH. 
 
 the divinity of the gods who visited him, served up the limbs 
 of his son, at a banquet set before them. They perceived the 
 horrid nature of the dish ; and Tantalus is tantalized in hell, 
 for his crime, by being endued with perpetual thirst which 
 he can never satisfy, though placed up to the chin in water, 
 since the stream deserts him whenever he attempts to drink. 
 
 [27] Stanza 112. — The comets which appeared at the birth 
 of Mithridates, and at the period of his ascension of the throne 
 of Pontus, together with their significance of the future great- 
 ness of this remarkable potentate (whom Cicero terms the 
 greatest that ever reigned) are alike matter of the gravest 
 history : — “ Hujus futuram magnitudinem etiam caelestia 
 ostenta prsedixerant. Nam et quo genitus est anno, et eo quo 
 regnare primum csepit, Stella cometes per utrumque tempus 
 septuaginta diebus ita luxit, ut coelum omne conflagrare vide- 
 retur — &c.” Justin. Hist. lib. 37. cap. 2. 
 
 [28] Stanza 118. — “HUding,” an old word (too good to be 
 lost) for coward . 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE SEVENTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 London ! how imageable seems the strife 
 Of thy huge crowds amid this solitude ! 
 
 Instinct with hot, heart-feverous, throbbing life — 
 Racers for Mammon — day by day renewed — 
 
 Quick, motley actors in Mind’s interlude — 
 
 They flit before me ; or again, I walk 
 Wonder-lost less with splendours unendued 
 With power of thought than human shapes that stalk 
 Though thy vast wilderness of ways, and, smiling, talk 
 
 n. 
 
 With their own wretchedness which hath estrange 1 
 Them from their kind, but cannot stifle dreams 
 That Beggary’s rags shall, one day, be exchanged 
 For Grandeur’s robes, and Fortune’s favouring beams 
 Gild their last hours. These, these, amid thy streams 
 Of populousness, thy lavish shews of pride, 
 
 And pomp, and equipage, were living themes 
 For healthiest thought that did my folly chide 
 When I, along thy streets, a gazing ’venturer, hied, 
 
 hi. 
 
 Oh ! if the heart doth crave for loneliness, 
 
 Deep in thy crowded desart it may find 
 hs drear wish realised. In Misery’s dress — 
 
 Their blighted visages to humankind 
 A pregnant lesson, but their names enshrined, 
 Perchance, in secresy — how stealthily 
 Such hermits of the heart glide on behind 
 The bustling men of gain, or groups of glee 
 That swell thy blended throngs of thrift and gaiety! 
 
204 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Oft have I followed such a stealthy form, 
 
 To mark his whereabout of rest or home, 
 
 Until he plunged into some haunt where swarm, 
 
 In dingy dens, that shadow forth the gloom 
 Of hearts within, what the World calls its ‘scum’ — 
 Victims of gilded fraud, and titled lust, 
 
 And pensioned knavery ! Will it e’er come — 
 
 The hour when Man shall venture to be just, 
 
 And dare to give true names unto his fellow-dust? 
 
 v. 
 
 Age after age hath gazed the eager throng, — 
 
 As, now, I seem, again, to see it gaze, 
 
 Heedless of moral worth, or right or wrong, 
 
 While haughty Pomp unclosed its newest blaze 
 Of tear-wrung splendour : and, perchance, to praise 
 Of garish shew, blame for great gold misspent 
 Hath followed, as it follows now : yet, raise 
 The trump of pageantry, — and ears are lent 
 By thousands who lisp scorn for Time’s old rabblement ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Will they, one day, the clown and artizan, 
 
 Strip off these swaddling-bands of gauze — these chains 
 Of gossamer ? This baby-talisman — 
 
 Will it much longer charm the child of pains 
 And sweat, to leave his bread-toil ? Oh ! there reigns 
 Of strength in Labour’s millions, a young breath 
 That gaunt Starvation quells not, but sustains ! 
 
 Where, now, my memory wanders, may its wrath 
 Ne’er burst ! — Monarch, adown thy stately palace-path ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 I saw thee on the day thou wast a bride, 
 
 And shouted, ’mid my joy-tears, with the crowd : 
 
 Thou wert a woman, and thou satt’st beside 
 Thy bosom’s choice, while happiness o’erflowed 
 Thy heart, and in thy fair young countenance glowed. 
 Beholding thine, what could I less than feel 
 A sympathetic joy ? Ay, though a proud 
 Worship of England’s stern old Commonweal 
 Was mine, — for thee, that day, I breathed devotion leal. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 205 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And many a heart, yielding, that festive day, 
 
 To Nature’s impulses of hope and joy, 
 
 Confiding, blessed thee ! Queen ! if thou delay 
 To help thy Poor— if thou, thyself, destroy 
 The promise of that time, and harsh alloy 
 Of blame with memory of our joy now blend — 
 What marvel ? Hopes, that do the heart upbuoy, 
 Turned to despair by sufferings slighted, rend 
 All gentle feelings in their way to some dire end. 
 
 When next thou passest by Whitehall, look up, 
 
 I pray thee, and remember who felt there 
 The fatal axe ! Ay, — look ! — nor be the dupe 
 Of tinselled traitors who would thee ensnare 
 To ease and grandeur, till — thy People’s prayer 
 For justice all too long delayed — they rise 
 With that old heart the Stuart to despair 
 Drove, first, — and, then, to vengeance ! Hunger cries 
 Throughout thy realm — ‘ Queen ! from the fearful Past — 
 
 I know that tellers of plain truths are * Goths’ 
 
 And 4 savages’ in their esteem who haunt 
 The halls of royalty— the pageant moths 
 That flutter in thy beams — the sycophant, 
 
 The beau, the coronetted mendicant : 
 
 Yet, speak I not from brutal nature; nor 
 Is thirst for violence fell habitant 
 Of labour’s children’s hearts. Queen ! they who store 
 Thy mind with such belief wrong grievously thy Poor ! 
 
 xr. 
 
 Believe one born amid their daily toils 
 
 And sighs,— and, since, observant of the words 
 
 And deeds of those who live on Labour’s spoils : 
 
 Thy Poor, it is — and not their haughty lords — 
 
 In whose hearts vibrate gentle Nature’s chords 
 Of tenderness for thee, ev’n while they groan 
 With deepest wrongs. 4 We suffer by the hordes 
 4 Of selfish ones,’ they say, 4 that hide the throne : 
 
 * If she could know our woes — w r e should not, vainly, moan !’ 
 
206 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Lady ! ’tis thus the hunger-bitten ones 
 Their simple ) lingering trust in thee expiess: 
 
 Let thy heart answer — ’mid superb saloons 
 And soldiered pomp — with truth and faithfulness, 
 
 If thou deserv’st this trust from comfortless 
 And bread-pinched millions ! Wouldst thou read aright 
 Thy glory ? Seek to be the heritress 
 Of love deserved — choosing, with noble slight 
 Of gauds, to make the Poor’s heart-smile thy sole delight 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Alas ! in vain thus breathes a rebel thrall 
 Fond wish that, now a thousand years have rolled, 
 
 To Alfred’s land it might, once more, befall 
 That sun of human glories to behold — 
 
 A monarch scorning blood-stained gauds and gold, 
 
 To build the throne in a blest People’s love ! 
 
 It may not be! Custom, soul-numbing, cold, 
 
 Her web hath round thee, from thy cradle wove : 
 
 Can heart of a born-thrall with pulse of Freedom move ? 
 
 xiv. 
 
 Deadly, mind-blighting influences begird 
 Thee daily, hourly : ’tis thy lot. A gaol 
 Is mine. Thus far, our lot how like ! The herd 
 Of titled, starred, and sworded things, that fail 
 Not to enclose thee in their watchful pale, 
 
 Are but thy chief and under-turnkeys. Thou 
 By birth, for life, — and I, by force, — this bale 
 Of bondage prove. Rebel, or Queen, we bow 
 Alike to circumstance : our mould to it we owe. 
 
 xv. 
 
 Oh ! who shall mete due blame to things of earth ? 
 When, passing from that palace, heart -felt ire 
 Doth rise, viewing a shame on royal birth 
 Becolumned on that spot of moral mire, — 
 
 When burneth momentary, rash desire 
 To see him and the elder-born there swing 
 On an eternal gibbet, — if the fire 
 O’th’ heart flasheth within, will it not fling 
 On conscience home reproof, and wholesome chastening ? 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 207 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Hadst thou who glancest on that pillared Shame 
 Been — like him — next of kin to Infamy 
 In royal robes, scant-minded, without aim 
 Cast on the gaudy world that sought with glee 
 To tempt or gratify his lust — in thee 
 Would the poor soldier, or his orphan-child, 
 
 Or beggar’d widow, in their misery, 
 
 So oft have found a heart whose glow beguiled 
 Their tears with bounteous help until the mourners smiled 0 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Alas ! frbrn tears this balm of tears was wrung 
 Millions on millions toiled and pined and wept 
 To clothe with Murder’s panoply the young — 
 
 The thoughtless — who to swift destruction leapt, 
 
 Or back to home with maimed bodies crept — 
 
 Winners of ‘ Glory’ ! — while, to toil and weep 
 Was still the millions’ lot : if Death had swept 
 Off thousands, — blood-garbed thousands more must leap 
 Into the breach : War, — Madness, — must their harvest reap ! 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Dash down ? Nay, rear more shameless columns ! high 
 And higher still ! Ye are but, niggard carles 
 Who taste the fruit of * Glory* ! To the sky 
 Lift up ten thousand trophies till it whirls 
 Our blood to see them, and the foreigner gnarls 
 His fingers in hot shame ! Why do ye spare 
 A corner ’neath yon mighty dome, for churls 
 Like Howard, Reynolds, Jones, and Johnson? Tear 
 The low quarternion down ! Why stand their dull forms 
 
 ’Tis Glory’s temple ! Glory — whose great brood 
 Escape the gallows by a broidered coat 
 And larger knife wherewith to shed the blood 
 Of brothers ! What meek traitor hither brought 
 Philanthropy and Art, Genius and Thought, 
 
 To stain the mausoleum of the great 
 
 And grand in murder ? Cast the cowards out ! 
 
 Their effigies do only tribulate 
 His joy who here beholds what pomps on 4 heroes’ wait ! 
 
208 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Briton ! gaze deeply on the marbled crowd — 
 Forgetting the mean four ! Oh ! let it swell 
 Thy veins with ecstasy to view this proud 
 Array of warriors — some, as if they fell 
 But now, in Victory’s arms, beneath the knell 
 Of Fate — some, girt with blazonry of brand, 
 
 Bike, cannon, war-ship, or brute shade that well 
 Shews slaughter was their trade ! While peal those grand 
 Deep diapasons — bow, and reverence glory’s band ! [I] 
 
 XXI. 
 
 What matter that yon vocal instruments 
 Join the loud organ’s thunder P ’Tis for bread : 
 
 They chaunt of ‘ mercy,’ — poor subservients ! 
 
 Bread, that their pampered masters, in whose stead 
 They do this meaningless day-drudgery, spread 
 In measure scant for each poor breath-machine : 
 Shunning the task that irks both heart and head — 
 
 To hymn the pitying thorn-crowned Nazarene [mien ! 
 Where laurelled Murder holds high pomp with marbled 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Dost thou refuse to reverence Carnage vast, 
 
 And hie thee back where glooms yon elder fane, 
 Shrouding the mouldered great ones of the Past, 
 
 With all its solemn glories of dyed pane 
 
 And carven stone P Ah ! Briton, who wouldst fain, 
 
 Where sleep thy country’s truly glorious few, 
 
 In that dim 4 corner,’ joy in awe — restrain 
 Thy heart ! Fraud must to Force, its twin, be true : 
 Mind must be bann’d, like Childe : they’ll welcome 
 
 [Waterloo ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Perchance the Priest forbodes his end is near, 
 
 Unless he come less lazily with aid 
 To stem the torrent in whose strong career 
 Thrones, altars, may be whirled ! Shall they be stayed — 
 Thought’s whelming waves ? Can Priestcraft’s joint cru- 
 With carnage against Mind, arrest its course? — [sade 
 Oh, ‘ let them grapple,’ as the great one bade, [2] 
 
 ‘ Falsehood and Truth’ !— awhile Fraud linkt with Force 
 May boast ! but Truth shall one day, ‘put’ them ‘ to the 
 
 {[worse* ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 209 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Let priest with warrior, old comates in rule, 
 
 Join hands, and tear from vault and niche and shrine, 
 From pedestal in fane and vestibule, 
 
 The Heroes of the Mind ! Let them assign 
 Sole honour to the puissant Butcher line 
 Throughout wide earth, beneath high heaven : the day 
 "Will come when the triumphing sun shall shine 
 On earth renewed : not always shall his ray 
 Gild Murder’s monuments : they surely shall decay ! 
 
 » xxv. 
 
 Oh ! what wilt thou be, then, my country, ’mong 
 The nations ? Shakspere’s home, and Alfred’s realm — 
 Land where our Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, sung — 
 Where infant Truth decked Wicklifie’s warrior-helm — 
 Where Bacon burst Man’s age-worn spirit-film — 
 Footstool of Newton while he spanned the sky — 
 Cradle of glorious names that fill and whelm 
 A Briton’s heart with love, and pride, and joy — 
 
 Wilt thou be great and glorious, then— freed from alloy 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Of all thy old, mistaken strife to be 
 Glorious and great ? Wilt thou above the wave 
 Then bare thy generous breast — Nurse of the Free, 
 Alone — extinct the Tyrant and the Slave — 
 
 And filled with Brother-Men ; not beings that crave 
 To see the murderer of one brother hang, 
 
 Yet vaunt the * glory’ of each carnage-grave, 
 
 From Agincourt to Waterloo, where sang 
 The trumpet over thousands in their hearts’ death-pang 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Will truthful greatness crown thy hoary age, 
 
 Or desart-savagery its reign resume 
 Wide over thee, and to the bard or sage 
 Of far off clime, new-born from mental gloom 
 Hereafter, even Shakspere’s name become 
 A worn-out glory, or, like Orpheus’ lyre, 
 
 Fade into fable ? On thy future doom 
 Thy children, England! ponder, with desire; 
 
 Though vainly buried millions burned with kindred fire ! 
 
210 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Anotlier day of dreams is gone ! — yet must the sun 
 Bring other flowers than these cold things of Spring-* 
 Poor, puny prisoners, that, to look upon 
 Raise tears — ere Time to me shall hither bring 
 The hour of Freedom. How we still do cling 
 Unto the world, as if we yet might find 
 Therein substantial joy ! — 
 
 Fancy took wing, 
 
 Again in sleep; and, in the realms assigned 
 To suicidal souls, wandered the sleepless Mind. 
 
 xxix. 
 
 Methought I passed adown the sculptured aisle, 
 
 With a new band of ghostly travellers 
 Whose visages were clad with smirk and smile, 
 
 Although they looked as if earth’s sepulchres 
 Had newly cast them out : mirthsome compeers 
 In grave-clothes, on they tripped, with glee more grim 
 Than if a troop of monks or caloyers, [3] 
 
 Smit with some sudden madness or wild whim, 
 
 Were seen to laugh and dance unto a funeral hymn. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 And when they reached the dome-like space, methought 
 In circle the strange crew took hands, and round 
 They whirled, with laughter and delirious shout, 
 
 Until the vault — ’neath which I heard no sound 
 Before — gave back such mirth as did astound 
 These revellers in shrouds; whereat they wailed 
 And wildly wept, and, each, the deathly wound 
 By his own hand inflicted, swift, unveiled, 
 
 And fiercely on himself for mad self-murderer railed ! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 A silent sorrow, then, their essence clothed, 
 
 And slowly from beneath the dome they passed, 
 
 With eyes that told how achingly they loathed 
 Prolonged existence, and how fain would cast 
 Its bondage off, with their old guilty haste, 
 
 In spite of self-upbraidings, if the soul 
 Were brittle as earth’s clay. Upon a waste 
 The wanderers emerged, and sought some goal [dole. 
 Where, with life-wantons like themselves, they might con- 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 211 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Laurels of conquerors, chaplets of vain bards, 
 
 Bracelets of beauties, diadems of kings, 
 
 Lay shivered on the waste with porcelain shards, 
 
 And fractured counterfeits of jewelled rings, 
 
 And robes in rags : of all Earth’s gaudy things 
 Some image there lay mangled, marred, or rent ; 
 
 And, as they trod upon these symbolings 
 Of their past pride, on mortal life misspent [ment. 
 The travellers thought, and sighed, with grievous languish- 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 A strand they reached, with waters sluggish, shallow, 
 And strown with weed-grown walls where human mopes 
 Reclined, while others idly ’gan to wallow 
 In the dull wave : a realm of misanthropes 
 It seemed, for none his neighbour told what hopes 
 Or fears he had, or doubts or wishes : all 
 Lugubrious silence kept, and drooped, as droops 
 The brooding thing who doth his soul enthral 
 With hates, till he thinks all men’s veins, like his, hold gall. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Part of the dreary band with which I marched 
 Clomb those dank walls, fording the shallow stream, 
 And lay them vilely down ; a remnant searched 
 Along the beach for spot that they might deem 
 More meet for resting-place : these, in my dream, 
 
 I companied, until a bay they neared, 
 
 From whence, discerned by an unearthly gleam 
 Of lurid light, huge, half-sunk towers appeared,*— 
 
 And pinnacles their points from out the waters reared. 
 
 xxxv. 
 
 And here, methought, w T e halted, by a groupe 
 
 Of ghosts that sat upon a ledge of rock 
 
 Listlessly watching the gray ruins stoop 
 
 Unto their fall among the waves that broke 
 
 With leaden weight against their sides. None spoke 
 
 A welcome, or unto our stay gave heed, 
 
 But gazed still drowsily on. Within me woke 
 Desire to know them; but, the soul, though freed 
 From clay, on this dull shore seemed outward lore to need 
 
 p 2 
 
212 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Here, spirit shared no powers intuitive : 
 
 So gross it grew, that for old mortal sense 
 The mind longed, painfully, when it would give 
 Unto its neighbour mind some evidence 
 That it still held its being : will, vehemence, 
 
 Fire, energy, the soul no longer felt : 
 
 Cold, carking consciousness of indigence 
 Of thought — from waste with which it had misdealt 
 Its opulence on earth — within the spirit dwelt. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 One of the listless groupe, at length, began 
 To murmur sounds — for spirit was too weak, 
 
 In this low realm, to beam forth thought, or scan 
 The thoughts of others if they did not speak. 
 
 And then another murmured, till apeak 
 Each raised himself to listen ; I, to learn 
 Who spoke ; when three, I saw by their antique 
 Eagle-beaked faces, were of Rome th’ Eterne — 
 
 Two of gay France — two of my fatherland more stern. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 And by observance of a dull dispute 
 
 That rose from murmurs to less slumberous words, 
 
 I found out Nero’s lewdly dissolute 
 Comate, Sophonius, who, when Galba’s guards 
 Sought for his guilty life, forestalled their swords. [4] 
 Here leant he, by the Tyrant’s ‘ Arbiter 
 ‘ Of Elegancies’ — whom the Muse records 
 For polished verse— 111 Fame for panderer 
 To Rome’s imperial beast of lust and massacre.[5] 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 That proverb with them sate — the epicure 
 Of epicures — he who through fear of want 
 Destroyed the carcase he could not manure 
 Sufficiently with garbage, from the scant 
 Tenth of a million, which this cormorant 
 From gormandizing spared. [6] Buffoon confest, 
 
 Leant, by Apicius, the hair-brained Mordaunt, 
 England’s fine fool, all Europe’s courtly guest, [7] 
 Who paid his debts — then blew his brains out for a jest ! 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 213 
 
 XL. 
 
 Lumley was there, a 4 noble lord,’ in life, [8] 
 
 Who his kept mistress to distraction loved, 
 
 Yet, having having pledged his troth to take for wife 
 A lady chaste his thoughtful choice appioved, 
 
 Grew crazy with dilemma, till it moved 
 His hand to sohje the puzzle which his mind, 
 
 Too delicately sensitive, behoved 
 
 To solve. He seemed a lord of extinct kind. 
 
 Certes, lords now no puzzle in such troth-pledge find ! 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Vatel, who cut his throat to shun the stain 
 Of not being able sumptuously to store 
 The supper-table for his guests ; [9] with vain 
 Villeneuve, Napoleon’s admiral, who bore 
 Disgrace so oddly that he flew to lore 
 Of stern anatomy with aim to know — 
 
 What he both learnt and practised — how the core 
 Of life a pin may pierce, with one quick throe ; [10] 
 Two spirits truly French made up the groupe I saw. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 Nero’s two courtiers soon their contest ended ; 
 Apicius spoke not ; and the mopes of France, 
 
 With Lumley, on the rock their shadows bended, 
 
 As if o’ercome by that clime’s puissance 
 Of dullness, or, because all esperance, 
 
 They thought, was fled, for them, of happy change: 
 But soon, Mordaunt upwaking from his trance, 
 
 Gave utt’rance to his piebald musings strange: 
 
 And thus did he his motley images arrange:* — 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Petronius, though our mystic lot be placed 
 In this dull realm where sight and sound combine 
 Our sensories, for aye, to overcast 
 With brooding phantasies, and saturnine 
 Despairs ; or, else, as with an anodyne 
 Of thought, to lull us into listlessness; 
 
 Let us, again, essay to intertwine 
 Some shreds of brightness with the sombre dress 
 Our spirits wear in this drear land, so effortless. 
 
214 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Tell us some jest of old careering Rome, 
 
 With its monstrosities of apish men, 
 
 Who ever seemed desirous to become 
 Something that was not human. What a den 
 Of horror must thy prince have made it, when 
 He lit it up to see a merry blaze ! 
 
 And yet, ’twas but a change : from outward ken 
 Shut up, horrors as deep, in the foul ways 
 O’ th’ heart, were witnessed daily by man’s inner gaze. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 What Europe’s modern folds of rogues and fools 
 Display, thy olden city must have shewn : 
 
 Strife murderous as the sword — but waged with tools 
 Of deadlier structure : tongues venomed t o’ impugn 
 All humble virtues, oiled to gloss o’ergrown 
 And hideous vice, and help it to pursue 
 Its course of lust and blood. Thy prince hath won 
 A name will never die : the lot of few 
 Who humbly toil for good, and selfish wrong eschew. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Such weaklings win but scorn; and so ’twas shrewd 
 
 In thy magnifical incendiary 
 
 To use a masterstroke should teach the brood 
 
 Of puny things to come what ’twas to be 
 
 Acute in wit : for no dexterity 
 
 Of after-men can now the name destroy 
 
 Of fiddling, murdering Nero — 
 
 Cease thy glee ! 
 
 Returned the Roman, — or thy tongue employ 
 On themes that will thy hapless fellows less annoy. 
 
 XLVI I. 
 
 The prince thou slander’st had a noble soul, 
 Although eccentric : hireling scribes defamed 
 Him, or the world would his great deeds extol, 
 
 Not censure. Man’s advance he always aimed 
 To hasten : wisdom, art, song, music claimed 
 Him ever as their blandest, truest friend ; 
 
 And, in the deed thou hast so lightly named, 
 
 His purposes were princely : a quick end 
 He put to ugliness that did with beauty blend : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 215 
 
 XLVII1. 
 
 Filth-nests with palaces, that erst distilled 
 Their feculent odours on the air, and spread 
 Nausea and death. Thou shouldst have seen Rome filled 
 With homes of stateliness and grace, instead 
 Of mere mud-huts of squalor: ’twould have bred 
 
 In thee much admiration [11] 
 
 And the roast, — 
 
 Resumed Mordaunt, — was trifling : to the dead 
 Those who were burnt Decay w’ould soon have tossed, — 
 And Death, doubtless preferred the speedier holocaust. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Filth-nests! why, ay; and the mere wingless fowls — 
 I’d term them such, did the old Cynic sneer, 
 
 As in wise Plato’s face, [12] — the dirty thralls 
 Were of no worth. Besides, how vain it were 
 Of the birds’ filthy nests fair Rome to clear, 
 
 And yet to leave the filth-birds ! Thus, brave War 
 Is the world’s health’s effectual pioneer, 
 
 As well as burning: Earth, it doth not mar, [car. — 
 But mend — to bruise it, now and then, with Slaughter’s 
 
 L. 
 
 Spite of thy jeers, — Villeneuve, inclined to wrath, 
 Took up the strife, and said, — War hath its use 
 As well as honours : harvest and aftermath 
 Are rendered plenteous by the tide diffuse 
 Of blood : the vulture’s leavings do conduce, 
 
 As well, to fertilize the barren earth, 
 
 Which might, but for the timely stream let loose 
 On it, become one general mass of dearth, 
 
 Nor yield another grain for things of human Birth. 
 
 LI. 
 
 Thus doth the carnage of the field assist 
 Great Providence. Nay, more : the lord of fight 
 Is Nature’s mightiest, best phlebotomist : 
 
 ’Tis well that the fell falchion doth alight 
 On thousands, and more slaughterous nitre blight 
 Myriads of crawling things. What w’ould the world 
 Grow’, but a putrid swarm, in the vast flight 
 Of years, if oft the warrior’s flag unfurled 
 The sun saw not, nor smiled on crowds to swift death hurled? 
 
216 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LII. 
 
 And, if Earth's youth the sword did not thus sweep 
 Away by thousands, in what woe and want, 
 
 What scorn and rags, would many of them creep 
 To helpless age ? But, next, the combatant 
 Regard with Glory fired — 
 
 Nay, — said Mordaunt, — 
 Mar not thy theme ; for thou hast pictured well 
 The truest commendations War can vaunt : 
 
 Slide not to farce : thou never wilt excel 
 
 The argument, though tragic, we have heard thee tell. 
 
 LIII*. 
 
 Such were the shameless reas’nings of the Strong 
 For murdering the Weak, I heard in life : 
 
 And yet these very reas’ners pale at wrong 
 Wrought by the lone assassin with the knife : 
 
 These very men whose arguments are rife 
 Of aiding mystic Providence, by huge 
 Assassination ! That such hateful strife 
 Of inconsistency we fled, I grudge 
 Not, though it be for aye in this dull zone to lodge. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 And I judge otherwise, — with lazy speech 
 The suicidal glutton ’gan to break 
 His moody silence : could I old Earth reach 
 Again, at will, I quickly would forsake 
 This clime that fits perception so opaque 
 As thine. Why wonder at aught strange or mad 
 They do or say on Earth P Do they not make 
 A thing for worship that they say doth add 
 To being merely’ to slay what he with life hath clad ? 
 
 LV. 
 
 And justify they not his deathful laws 
 By the same logic we have heard but now ? 
 
 * All things hath framed this great uncaused Cause,’ 
 They say, ‘ to prey upon each other, through 
 ‘ His blest design to save them from the slow 
 ‘ And lingering death of helpless age : and thus/ 
 Say they, * when men the universe of woe 
 ‘ And murder view, and shudder, — vision gross 
 * Leads them to term its kindly beauty — hideous.’ 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 217 
 
 LVI. 
 
 If such their model of perfection be, 
 
 How canst thou wonder, if, with kindliness 
 Like his to whom in awe they bow the knee, 
 
 Their human slaughter-shapes they drape and dress ? 
 Mordaunt, — I ever laughed at answerless 
 Priest-riddles, and unto the joys of sense 
 And appetite betook me; and possess 
 Them now I would, if this new residence 
 Of being, and its laws, compelled not abstinence. 
 
 LV1I. 
 
 And as thou think’st, Apicius, so think I, — 
 
 Said dull Tigillinus ; — sense, and its joy, 
 
 But nought beside on earth, are worth a sigh : 
 
 They rendered Life worth having, though alloy 
 Was mingled with it : he who was least coy 
 Of these true pleasures, was, in my esteem, 
 
 The wisest man : ay, he who from a boy 
 Led life of revel, — filling up his dream 
 With merriment — daring the rapids of Life’s stream 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 So judged I that our prince lived by the rule 
 Of truest wisdom : could I once more share 
 His favour and his joys, I would not pule 
 At the world’s contradictions, like this rare 
 Sample of folly, who with haste so yare [13] 
 
 Fled hither from wealth’s, pleasure’s lavishment, 
 
 In quest of dark remediless despair. 
 
 Rome knew not such a lunatic: content 
 We were to live, — ’less ill with good was overblent. 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Ye may bepraise yourselves, — Mordaunt replied ; 
 
 But I regard ye as twin swine — for nought 
 More noble ye resemble : things of pride 
 And filthiest greed ye be ; and Earth o’erfraught 
 With such as ye becomes the irksome spot 
 It is, and hath been. Nature doth contain 
 No greater mystery than that with thought 
 Such grovelling clay she doth endow ; the chain 
 Of mire and mind ye link : your being else is vain. 
 
218 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 Is not our life — all life — as vain as theirs ? 
 
 Asked Lumley, — while the Romans sank supine 
 And slumberous, on the rock : — we were the heirs 
 Of Vanity on earth; and this confine 
 Of wretchedness affords no cheering sign 
 That we shall e’er attain a nobler state — 
 
 Although some fable it who still entwine 
 Earth’s credulous dreams with doubt, and consolate 
 This miserable being’ with emulous debate. 
 
 LX I. 
 
 And what, if such debate high truths evolve 
 We wot not of? — earnestly asked Vatel : 
 
 My mind doth much misgive ’twas rash resolve, 
 When ghost-kings messaged us, that did impel 
 Our souls to scoff. If we have bid farewell 
 To esperance ourselves — 
 
 Nurse r.o regret 
 
 So infantile, — said Lumley : — wisely quell 
 Its yearnings : ne’er can dreams in me beget 
 A ray of hope that we shall ’scape from Torture’s net, 
 
 LX 1 1 . 
 
 It is a universe designed for sorrow — 
 
 Designed if’t be; and if it rose by chance, 
 
 ’Tis still as vile. I wish a vast death thorough 
 All life would penetrate, until expanse 
 Of space were filled with discontinuance 
 Of thought, sense, motion. Worthless are they all, 
 Serving no end but pain — the heritance 
 Of all things: pleasure doth but serve to pall: 
 
 ’Tis but a sweet to render bitterer Life’s gall. 
 
 LXIII. 
 
 Tell us Annihilation shall imbibe 
 All being, and I thy prophecy will name 
 Worthy rehearsal and regard : but gibe 
 No dreams of some fantastic afterdrame 
 Of blessedness for men and spirits : maim 
 Their wits must be who doatingly desire 
 For boon what we ought rather to disclaim 
 And shun, judging from Past and Present: ire, 
 
 Not joy, I feel, when told I shall new bliss acquire.- — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 219 
 
 LX IV. 
 
 Would that on earth physician for the mind 
 Like to thyself I had* discovered, — said 
 Vatel : — thy morbid discontent and blind 
 Distortion ev’n of <joy, benignly spread 
 With grief through Being, into woe as dread 
 As evil’s self — creates so deep distaste 
 By its untruth, that thou in me hast bred 
 More reverence for the good in life amassed, 
 
 Than if thou wert Nature’s devout encomiast. 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Spirits, — within me hath awoke new hope, 
 
 New’ faith! Ev’n here we are not wholly lost: 
 
 It is because in sluggard thought we mope 
 And drivel, that we deem this mystic coast 
 Our perdurable prison. Swiftly trust 
 Shall rise to break our bondage, when no more 
 We palter with ourselves, but with robust 
 Resolve probe our life-errors to the core — 
 
 Until, not Fate, but our own folly we abhor. 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Soon shall we then discover w’hy w r e made 
 Shipwreck of mortal life, and why w r e here, 
 
 By turns, sink in low sloth, fiercely upbraid 
 
 Being itself, or agonize with Fear 
 
 And Pain; and soon deliverance will appear: 
 
 For Mind was formed all Evil to subdue 
 
 By its own might 
 
 Old earth -dreams ! — with a sneer, 
 Villeneuve exclaimed ; and let Earth still pursue 
 Her dreams: but, do not here the sickening theme renew. 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 But who approacheth by the gloomy strand, 
 
 With step of haste bounding o’er rock and level ? 
 Strange haste, in this supine, lethargic land ! 
 
 ’Tis he who did on earth so deeply revel 
 In his dark theme of ‘ Suicide no Evil,’ — 
 
 And, when the page was finished, finished life — 
 Robert of Normandy, yclept the Devil . — 
 
 Thy visage is a herald of new strife — [rife ! 
 
 Wild spirit ! Speak the thoughts with which thy soul is 
 
220 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX VIII. 
 
 Already by the groupe, Le Diable 
 
 Stood, with a look that seemed to reprehend 
 
 Those sojourners in gloom — all, save Yatel, — 
 
 Whose eyes of new-born hope a light I kenned, 
 
 Of mystic sympathy and joy to send 
 Forth as a greeting to the Norman’s eyes. 
 
 And thus the Norman spake : 
 
 Spirits, attend 
 
 The invitation from the Good and Wise, 
 
 That now I bring : attend, and from your sloth arise ! 
 
 LXIX. 
 
 Brothers, although their primal call ye slighted, 
 
 Sages and bards and princely spirits yearn 
 To kindle in your essences benighted 
 The fire of faith with which they inly burn. 
 
 And, thus, by one who erst, ye know, with scorn 
 Viewed being’s gift, message they have renewed, — 
 
 That ye may cease, when his soul’s hope ye learn, 
 
 And ken the faith with which he is imbued, 
 
 To think they mock ye with a feigned solicitude. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 It is no dream : Hades and Earth are waking 
 To consciousness of Mind’s omnipotence. 
 
 Not less unwise than guilty in forsaking 
 Old Earth we were ; for we with affluence 
 Of might to subdue Evil’s vehemence 
 Were gifted : ev’n the weakest might have won 
 Some vict’ry helpful to the prevalence 
 Of Mind o’er Evil. But, it is begun — 
 
 The lofty strife — and conquest shall be gained, full soon ! 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 I tell ye that on earth all natural ill 
 Begins to yield to Science : Pest’lence flees 
 Her climes ; and men shall soon begin to fill 
 Th’ expansive measure of their days. The seas 
 Already own the power of Mind : with ease 
 Men vault above the wave, fearing no rage 
 Of giant storms. On land, the very breeze 
 That vital is, they hold in vassalage, [sledge. 
 
 And yoke, by viewless chains, unto the thought-winged 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 22 i 
 
 LXXII. 
 
 Mind glows and fulmines even in the clown ; 
 
 And men from yoke conventional and old 
 Shake themselves free : the crosier and the crown, 
 
 The sword and gun all men begin to hold 
 For useless and pernicious things, and bold 
 The very peasants grow to laugh aloud 
 At swollen names of gew-gaw shapes in gold. 
 
 Think ye that changes such as these uncloud [proud ? 
 No change for Hades, and her kings and pomp-thrones 
 
 LXXIII. 
 
 I tell ye Change hath come : judgment condign 
 Hath fallen on the essences of kings 
 Who raged to hear deep sage and bard divine 
 Tell, in prophetic strain, pomp-glisterings 
 Should pass away, and spirit-homagings 
 Be paid to Mind and Goodness. Where the bow 
 Of promise skieth mystic symbolings 
 Of monarch-splendour, forfeiture I saw [awe. 
 
 Of thrones, which congregrated ghost-kings shook with 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 . Arise, arise, my brothers ! we were wrong 
 To quit Earth’s life in craven discontent 
 At Evil ; and ignoble to prolong 
 Our murmuring here it is. Evil was blent 
 With Good through being ; but the Blender meant 
 T’ ennoble human thought by healthful toil 
 That should have issue in magnificent 
 And universal triumph. Brothers, foil 
 The lethargy that doth your might-girt spirits spoil ! 
 
 LXXV. 
 
 Come, listen the inspiring theme of Good 
 And Right, and how doth dawn their jubilee ! 
 
 Spirits, the universe one brotherhood 
 Of Knowledge, Truth, and Love, full soon shall be ! 
 
 I say, arise ! — 
 
 Hence, with thy ribaldry ! 
 
 Apicius fiercely answered: of such fare 
 I covet not the taste. Hence, devotee 
 Of dreams ! To mock our misery forbear ! 
 
 Hence ! let us slumber on to deaden our despair ! 
 
222 
 
 THE PULIGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Thus spake his swinish spirit ; nor arose 
 His shade from its recumbency to greet 
 The earnest messenger. In deeper doze 
 Sophonius lay, as if he would maltreat 
 The Norman with contempt. The rest with meet 
 Attention heard ; and, with a countless host 
 The descant drew around, in haste more fleet 
 Than they had used for ages on that coast, [trust. — 
 
 Expressed, as with one voice, their new-born hope and 
 
 LXXVI I. 
 
 Then, to our brother exiles let us speed ! — 
 
 The Norman said ; — But what shall be your fate — 
 
 Victims of sensual gust ? Is it decreed 
 
 That Essences like yours in afterstate 
 
 Of absolute brutality prostrate 
 
 Shall lie for ever? Oh ! that one bright ray 
 
 From Nature’s central fire would ye create 
 
 Anew, with souls more human l 
 
 And, away 
 
 Faded my dream, as light renewed the prison-day. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SEVENTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza 20. — Some few monuments of men of real 
 worth have been placed in St. Paul’s within the last few 
 years ; but the statues of Howard, Dr. Johnson, Sir William 
 Jones, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, are yet the only prominent 
 figures of truly great men amidst the assemblage of marbled 
 man-slayers. 
 
 [2] Stanza 23. — “ And, though all the winds of doctrine 
 were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the 
 field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to mis- 
 doubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple ; who 
 ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open en- 
 counter V* — Milton’s Areopagitica. 
 
 [3] Stanza 29. — “Caloyers” — monastics of the Greek church. 
 
 [4] Stanza 38. — The portrait of Sophonius Tigellinus, — 
 who was distinguished in Nero’s court alike for dissoluteness 
 and treachery, and who, at last, betrayed even the imperial 
 libertine himself, — is well known to all readers of Juvenal ; 
 and Tacitus has left us a medallion picture (Hist. lib. 1. 
 cap. 72 ) truly characteristic of his portable and expressive 
 mintage. 
 
 [5] Stanza 38. — The circumstances of Petronius Arbiter’s 
 singular suicide are described in the 19th chapter of the 16th 
 book of Tacitus’s Annals. 
 
 [6] Stanza 39 . — “ Millies sestertium” or £807,290, is stated 
 to have been the worth of the estate of Apicius ; and when 
 
22'1 NOTES TO BOOK THE SEVENTH. 
 
 he had hanged himself in the diseased belief that he had 
 Hot enough left for a maintenance, “ centies sestertifim,” or 
 £80,000, was found to be the remnant of his fortune. — In the 
 stanza, I have used the rhymer’s license to employ round 
 numbers. 
 
 If these notes were intended for comment in lieu of neces- 
 sary explication, I could not pass by the name of Apicius 
 without observing, that the bearer of it fairly won his pre- 
 eminence over all gormandizers ancient or modern, not merely 
 by the vast sums spent on his appetite and by his self- 
 martyrdom to the lunatic dread of want, — but by his com- 
 position of the treatise “ de Arte Coquinaria,” — wherefrom, 
 perhaps, even Eude himself might derive some hints for 
 exciting dishes : though from Smollett’s well-known satirical 
 expose of the delicacies of Roman cookery, modern epicures 
 may imagine there can be nothing very enticing in the trea- 
 tise on Cookery by Apicius Ccelius. 
 
 [7] and [8] Stanzas 39 and 40. — The general reader may 
 find notices of the suicides of Mordaunt, cousin to the great 
 earl of Peterborough, and of Lumley, earl of Scarborough, in 
 various publications : the article “ Suicide” contained in a 
 translation of Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, that I 
 read when a boy, first made me acquainted with their whim- 
 sical cases. 
 
 [9] Stanza 41. — Vatel — My only knowledge of his suicide 
 is derived from Winslow’s “Anatomy of Suicide.” [Since 
 the publication of my first edition, a friend has referred me 
 to Mad. de Sevigne’s Letters for an account of this suicide. 
 The English reader will find it in Letter 52 of the transla- 
 tion, published in 7 duodecimo vols. London, 1801. The 
 account is too long to copy into a note ; but should be read.] 
 
 [10] Stanza 41. — Villen euve. — Seeing that one account of 
 his death is as mysterious as another (see “ Biographie Uni 
 verselle,” Vol. 49.), it may be, after all, that O’Meara’s ac- 
 count of it, as given by Napoleon, is as true as any other. — 
 * The conversation then turned upon French naval officers. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE SEVENTH. 
 
 225 
 
 Villeneuve — said ho, — when taken prisoner and brought to 
 England, was so much grieved at his defeat, that he studied 
 anatomy that he might destroy himself. For this purpose he 
 bought some anatomical plates of the heart, and compared 
 them with his own body, in order to ascertain the exact situ- 
 ation of that organ. On his arrival in France, I ordered that 
 he should remain at Rennes, and not proceed to Paris. Vil- 
 leneuve, afraid of being tidied by a court martial for disobedi- 
 ence of orders and consequently losing the fleet, for I had 
 ordered him not to sail, or to engage the English, determined 
 to destroy himself, and accordingly took his plates of the 
 heart, and compared them with his braast. Exactly in the 
 centre of the plate, he made a mark with a large pin, then 
 fixed the pin as near as he could judge in the same spot in 
 his own breast, shoved it in to the head, penetrated his heart, 
 and expired. When the room was opened, he was found 
 dead ; the pin in his breast, and the mark in the plate cor- 
 responding with the wound in his breast. He need not have 
 done it, — continued he, — as he was a brave man, though he 
 possessed no talent.” — Barry O’Meara’s “ Voice from St 
 Helena,’ ’ vol. i. page 57. 
 
 [11] Stanza 48.— My Ghost of Petronius Arbiter does not 
 argue half so earnestly in defence of Nero, as Mr. Walter 
 Savage Landor. — See his “ Imaginary Conversations.” 
 
 [12] Stanza 49. — The practical joke of Diogenes upon 
 Plato’s definition of a Man, will be remembered by almost 
 every reader. [“ Not so,” — say several of my friends. Here, 
 then, is the whimsical anecdote which was my authority : 
 « Plato defining Man a two-footed animal without icings , and this 
 definition being approved ; Diogenes took a cock, and pluck- 
 ing off all its feathers, turned it into Plato’s school, saying. 
 This is Plato’s Man : whereupon, to the definition was added, 
 having broad nails”-— Stanley’s Hist, of Philosophy.] 
 
 [13] Stanza 58. — “ Yare” — ready, nimble . The word is em- 
 ployed in the 1st Scene of “ The Tempest.” 
 
 15 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE SEVENTH. 
 
 [14] Stanza 67.— Robert le Diable is become a familiar 
 personage by the success of Meyerbeer’s famous opera ; but 
 whether he had ever any other existence than in the terrific 
 soubriquet given by his subjects to Robert I., Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, — or whether a real personage existed, who either 
 wrote a defence of Suicide, and then committed it, — or made 
 a compact with the Evil One after the manner of Faust, — I 
 suppose will remain a doubt. — I trust I may be allowed the 
 use of his imaginary existence, in a merely imaginary vision » 
 if I have employed as a spiritual agent, the “mere shadow 
 of a shade,’* he cannot be very much out of character. 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE EIGHTH. 
 
 Unbidden visitors, — yet welcome, — tears 
 Gush forth, while streams that dulcet melody — 
 
 The tremulous, soft 4 Sicilian Mariners’ — 
 
 Upon the evening air. How Love doth flee, — 
 
 Winged by the thrill of organ minstrelsy 
 So suddenly renewed within a gaol,[i] 
 
 To visit the heart’s home ! Thoughts full of thee, 
 
 My bosom’s own, — so blest they banish bale 
 For joy, — breathe from the tones of that heart-madrigal. 
 
 II. 
 
 How wondrous is existence! — what strange ties 
 It hath : what individable soul-links 
 There be with formless sounds and harmonies 
 The Mind, dulled by Life’s grosser turmoil, thinks 
 Extinct in power, — bereft of charm: how sinks 
 My spirit into Rapture’s lap, even now: 
 
 Such ecstasy, in Thraldom’s spite, Love drinks, 
 
 By help of those sweet notes, from gentle flow [woe! 
 Of Memory’s streams, that Joy saith nought can bring back 
 
 hi. 
 
 Hush ! ’tis my infancy’s quaint ‘Evening Hymn,’ 
 
 My mother’s favourite ! Tears ! ye best can tell 
 What thoughts the heart’s deep fountains overbrim 
 With tenderness when that loved choral swell 
 Its potency o’er memory sways. A knell 
 It seems and yet, a carol sweeter far 
 Than mirth can troll. Lives in its strain a spell 
 Which shews the grave that dear brave face doth mar, 
 But ever shields that heart from the oppressor’s war. 
 
 a 2 
 
228 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hark ! , tis the grand ‘ Old Hundredth* that now peals 
 Its solemn glory through the tranced soul ! 
 
 That matchless marshalry of chords reveals, 
 
 Luther! thy freeborn majesty: [2] they roll 
 So boldly, gravely full, — that man’s control, 
 
 We feel, befits not the thew’d mind upgrown 
 Which germs such thought-sounds. Term yemeathrall? 
 How, then, upwakes the Saxon with each tone, 
 
 Within me ? Nay, I feel true freedom still my own ! 
 
 v. 
 
 Vain are your fetters, tyrants, for the mind ! 
 
 Thy championship, brave stripling, proved them vain, 
 What time thou didst so fearlessly unbind 
 Old Europe from the triple tyrant’s chain, — 
 Enthroning Reason the soul’s suzerain : 
 
 Reason the judge o’ th’ book. True warrior 
 For all men’s right to think unawed by man, 
 
 What though mirk Superstition on the shore 
 Of Mind still lingers? She shall raise her throne no more. 
 
 vr. 
 
 Thy enterprize is speeding, and hath sped. 
 
 I care not that thou didst not comprehend 
 Its ultimate: it may be, wholesome dread 
 Of wild excess Nature doth sagely blend 
 With courage in great souls ; and, that the end 
 Of noblest change must gradually be sought, 
 
 And Reason’s heroes with Mind’s foes contend 
 From step to step, — yea, victory for Thought 
 By years of struggling toil be stably, fully wrought. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I care not though some weaknesses were thine : 
 
 Who shares thy giant strength? None but the high 
 And mighty mental lineage who divine, 
 
 From age to age, the ground whereon to ply 
 At vantage their souls’ sinews, and rely 
 On their own strength in truth for victory. 
 
 Thou art our own, great Saxon ! we descry 
 Our brave old Wicklifte’s soul restored in thee; 
 
 And claim thee for our honoured land of Lollardy ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 229 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Honour, all honour to ye, glorious band 
 Who broke the bondage of the Priest of Rome I 
 Sires of our common Saxon fatherland, 
 
 England and Germany, a glorious home 
 Ye left us , — if we will ! — amid the gloom 
 ‘Lighting a candle’ by your noble lives 
 And martyred deaths that quenchless, shall illume 
 Our land for aye! Oh^that death-vaunt still gives 
 Us strength ; and with it, brave one, thy great deed re- 
 
 What though those words, like oracles of old, 
 Were sealed, in their full meaning, to the seer, 
 Who uttered them ? The future shall behold 
 Their splendid verity, with vision clear ! 
 
 Then — honour to each stalwart pioneer 
 Of mental Freedom, — Wickliffe, Jerome, Huss, 
 Luther, Melancthon, Cobham, Latimer ! 
 
 Honour to all who dared the flame, scorn, loss, 
 Who spurned to live mere spirit thralls inglorious ! 
 
 x. 
 
 O thrice-blest children of that age of light 
 And love, which now from the far future beams ! 
 
 To you it will pertain to place aright 
 In Truth’s great temple whom herself esteems 
 Her true disciples. Ye, when Time’s dim dreams 
 And weakling fears are fled, and Knowledge pure 
 Hath given the topstone to Truth’s fane, — like gems 
 In gold, shall place each dazzling form secure 
 In its eternal niche. Our hands were premature ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 But, when the toil of Mind hath wrought its aim ; 
 When later Faiths, like older Phantasies, 
 
 Are reckoned with the Past; when Man’s high name 
 Is grander than all titles ; when all things of lies 
 And bloodshed, — thrones and altars, — creeds, and toys 
 Of Priests and Kings, — Knowledge hath swept away ; 
 When Wisdom hath outgrown the childish guise 
 Of mythic story, and put on th’ array 
 Of manhood ; in that boon, free, happy, brother-day, — 
 
230 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 It may be— that, in Truth’s eternal fane 
 Enshrined, each in his kindred niche of glory, 
 
 He quaintly termed ‘rebellious needleman,’[4] 
 
 By thee, great age-fellow! — with martyr gory, 
 
 Or some old stout confessor of faith hoary, 
 
 May stand, as right co-workers, equal, true, 
 
 For Truth ; although the world’s old bigot-story 
 Of Man’s mind-infancy did long misview [knew! 
 
 The scope of their twin-toil: scope that themselves scarce 
 
 xui. 
 
 It may be that, around that temple’s space, 
 
 Splendours may wreathe full many a doubter’s brow 
 As brilliantly as they illume the face 
 Of philanthropic creed’s-man. ’Mid the glow 
 Of sculptured excellence, in shining row, 
 
 Hobbes, Herbert, Mandeville, with Locke and Boyle — 
 Hume, Godwin, may, with Beattie, Butler, show — 
 Statued with equal honour in Truth’s aisle — 
 
 Lit with one ray — how truly kindred was their toil ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Spinoza and Rousseau, Bayle and Voltaire, 
 
 With Fenelon, Erasmus, Pascal, shrined — 
 
 May beam in brotherhood eternal there! 
 
 But, for thy future children doth the mind 
 
 Most fondly yearn, loved fatherland ! and find 
 
 Its sweetest dreams flow thence. O that some dream 
 
 Would visit me revealing humankind 
 
 As the far future shall discover them — 
 
 Living as they shall live on this loved ocean-gem 1 
 
 xv. 
 
 What Howard, when the dungeon is forgot; 
 
 What Montague, when no man’s blood is shed ; 
 
 What Hale, when justice can be no more bought ; 
 What Bernard Gilpin, when no Poor lack bread ; 
 What Cartwright, when no tyrants on them tread ; 
 What Clarkson, when the world hath not a slave; 
 What Owen, when free thought awakes no dread ; 
 What Mathew, when there is no sot to save ; [grave 
 What Men shall grace our isles when W^rong hath found 
 
OF SUICIDKS. 
 
 231 
 
 XVI, 
 
 O thrice blest children of that age of light 
 And love which now the trustful spirit sees, 
 
 Bright beaming from afar — Ye will not slight 
 Your noblest fathers, nor their memories ! 
 
 But, tombing names of blood and pride that please 
 The human patient, whom to drug and craze 
 Guile, long, with Powqr, hath striven — Ye to sw r eet ease 
 Of health, in heart and mind, restored shall raise, 
 
 With filial hands, true trophies to your fathers' praise ! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Bourse of the world wilt thou be, London, then ? 
 
 For still I turn with fondness to thy face, 
 
 And doat upon thee — though I, mournful, ken 
 Too many a blemish there ! Wilt thou a grace 
 Be, then, among Earth's cities ? Or, shall race 
 Arrive from some far clime, new emigrants 
 To found a home, and find thy desart-space 
 Renewed, my country ! — howling forest-haunts 
 And wilds il peopled with w r olves thy old inhabitants’'? [5] 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Shall Gain forsake thy marts, great queen of Thames ? 
 Thy merchant-navies vanish? — and, where Pride, 
 
 In famine-woven silks and blood-bought gems, 
 
 Now rolls her chariot shall Decay divide 
 Empire with silence, — there the lizard glide 
 ’Mong crumbling walls, — and there the badger peep 
 Forth from sere w T eeds that half his gray head hide, 
 Save w hen uplifted by the winds that sweep 
 'Mong chambers where thy pampered lords no longer sleep? 
 
 xix. 
 
 Or, shall true grandeur deck thee : bounding joy 
 Of human hearts feeling their fathers' home — 
 
 That happy home — renewed, and thee the Eye 
 Become of the wide w orld ? Gaol, * Bastile'-doom, 
 Treadmill, whip, gallow T s, demon War’s costume, 
 
 And all his trophies and his engines gone: 
 
 No Vileness robed — no Worth in rags; Health’s bloom 
 On cheek of sturdy sire and manly son, 
 
 Proving what secrets Science hath from Nature won : 
 
232 
 
 TIIE PURGATORY 
 
 XX. 
 
 Mind writ in every face ; books million-fold 
 Multiplied ; galleries with breath-shapes hung 
 Raffaelle might worship, or Apelles old; [song, 
 
 Groupes from great Shakspeare’s world, or Chaucer’s 
 In bronzed or marbled life, seeming up-sprung 
 From some new Phidian realm of earth beneath 
 To gem the populous squares ; Music’s full tongue 
 Telling to millions what Mozart in death [queath;[6] 
 Enraptured heard, but could not the boon-sounds be- 
 
 XXI. 
 
 And all — for all ! Rank, class, distinction-badge, 
 
 For ever gone ! Labour by Science made 
 Brief recreation — not by Privilege 
 Avoided, nor its thrift in name of Trade 
 Or Commerce filched. To give a brother’s aid 
 To brethren, and enlarge the general bliss 
 From knowledge, virtue, health — beyond parade 
 Of pomp or gold — affording joy. I wis, [dise ! — 
 
 When Truth doth reign, Earth shall be such a Para- 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Do I reharp like themes? Perchance, the gaol, 
 
 Doth stagnate thought. And now the blythe old man 
 Is gone, who joked, and told his merry tale 
 Each morning when the prison -day began, — 
 
 Who spread instruction through the hours’ long span, 
 Mingling the grave and gay with cheery tongue. 
 
 0 how I miss the septuagenarian ! [7] 
 
 1 wonder what hath kept his heart so young, 
 
 That still he dreams to live and see the end of Wrong ! 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Gone, are my younger fellow-rebels all, 
 
 To bustle, once more, with Life’s elbowing crowd; 
 
 And I am left, a solitary thrall, 
 
 Where stillness like the silence of the shroud 
 Pervades both night and day, save when aloud 
 Clash bolts and bars- and the shrill curfew tells 
 The prisoner must to bed. 
 
 The vision glowed 
 
 Again, in sleep; and, where the spirit dwells 
 I seemed to dwell, — the spirit that its own Life quells. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 233 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 A sense of loneliness, methought, I felt, 
 
 When, from beneath the dome, again, I passed, 
 
 And wandered over mountains where none dwelt, 
 
 But doleful voices from the howling blast 
 Cowed the lone spirit, while gloom-clouds o’er cast 
 The dull gray sky. Ailon, the way descended 
 Into a darksome dough, where antre vast, 
 
 With jagged mouth, the dern, dark pathway ended, 
 
 And with its lowering brow some gloomier change por- 
 
 I entered, but trod timidly the rock 
 That echoed hollowly my steps of fear ; 
 
 And oft I halted, hearing voices mock 
 
 And chide my rashness for o’erventuring there ; 
 
 Till, when I turned, thinking the cavern drear 
 And its unproven perils I would flee, 
 
 It seemed as if dank vapours rose to blear 
 My vision ; and, forthwith, they fell on me 
 With noisome blight, till I was blinded utterly. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Chilled unto marble horror with the sense 
 That I was blind, I would have shrieked, but, lo! 
 
 The will had lost its wonted prevalence 
 O’er faculty or organ ; and with throe 
 Unutterable I sank, feeling my woe 
 Too grievous to be borne. But, as I fell, 
 
 I ceased to grieve, feeling new might endow 
 My spirit — might to picture or to tell 
 I ken not — ’twas so wildly indescribable. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Onward I floated — for no joint or limb 
 I seemed to need — into a region dark 
 Beyond all thought : Earth’s midnight is but dim 
 Compared with the primeval blackness stark 
 And stript ev’n of minutest atomed spark 
 Of light my new intelligence perceived 
 In this strange clime. I, its stern shapes to mark 
 Seemed thence empower’d that I was now bereaved 
 Of grosser sight, and with new eyes that soul-realm cleaved: 
 
234 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Eyes most intensely spiritual that cleft 
 The dread opaque gleefully as young eyes 
 On earth view brightest stars in the blue weft 
 Above ; or lustrous gem-shells scrutinize 
 In fountains pellucid, then grasp the prize, 
 
 At jeopardy of life. Yet, I beheld 
 Emblems of mortal gloom and miseries, 
 
 Much more than joy : but in them was revealed 
 Grace so transcendent that the mind with rapture swelled 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 To feel its essence gifted with the power 
 Of viewing in thick darkness shapes of grace 
 And beauty so unspeakable. Meteor, 
 
 On marish seen, or victims’ burial-place, — 
 Phantasmagoric slights, where figures chase 
 Each other in illusive vision wild, — 
 Spectrous deceits the human eye doth trace, 
 By brain-sick fancy or shrewd art beguiled, — 
 All fain to explicate how mystic mind was filled 
 
 XXX. 
 
 With sculptured forms in darkness, and rich hues 
 Of pictures crowded on her rapid glance, — 
 
 First, statue-groupes arose that did suffuse 
 
 The soul with Love’s woe-tears: — Orpheus’ joy-trance 
 
 At his Eurydice’s deliverance — 
 
 Quick changed to pain and horror, as he turned — 
 
 Alas, too soon ! ill brooking tarriance 
 Of look — lips — clasped embrace : the bliss-cup earned 
 1 n vain — to atoms dashed — by Love’s own madness spurned ! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Then, Galatea, with her shepherd love, 
 
 Was statued, breathing joy, quick chased by pain ; 
 
 For o’er them bent the Cylop, ire enwove 
 
 in his grim glance; and wildly o’er her swain 
 
 The sea-nymph writhed when she beheld him slain. [8] 
 
 Soon, seemed Leander, struggling with the wave 
 
 In death, and Hero leaping in disdain 
 
 Of life, with haste into her watery grave. — 
 
 Then, images of grief and fate the darkness clave : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 235 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 f he Carian queen,— in that fair monument 
 
 She built for her loved spouse, and which the world 
 
 Proclaimed a wonder, — o’er the dead was bent ; [9] 
 
 And he who sung how the great Titan hurled 
 Defiance back at Jove,— stricken brain whirled, 
 
 Fell, as the tortoise from the eagle’s beak 
 Dropped on his head, — the oracle upfurled 
 In mystery accomplishing.[iO] The Greek 
 Sublime, pitying his slanderers, and with courage meek 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Drinking the hemlock, while in aching grief 
 
 His friends stood round, then passed ; and, next, rose two 
 
 Sad images depicturing man’s brief 
 
 Mirth-hour on earth : Pollio’s fair child, that drew 
 
 It earliest breath in laughter, but scarce knew 
 
 Life ere in death it faded ; and the stern 
 
 And melancholy Agelastus, who 
 
 Ne’er laughed but once, and then, in Cynic scorn, 
 
 To see the thistles by the ass for lettuce torn. [I L], 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Then rose twdn corpses of the craftsmen sage 
 The Pythian’s oracle that deftly reared, — 
 
 With Juno’s piiestess’ duteous lineage 
 Who drew their mother to the fane : reward 
 Of death, as the best gift, on each conferred 
 By the high deities, for wondrous skill 
 And filial piety. [1 2 1 Countless appeared 
 The sculptured shapes, thereafter, that did still 
 Pourtray grief, fate, life’s sw iftness, and all human ill. 
 
 xxxxv. 
 
 Praxiteles, his mirror seemed to dash 
 To living fragments which a thousand-fold 
 Shewed his deformed rude visage to the rash 
 Enraged destroyer : Hoar, in gloomy hold 
 Trophonius sat : young Phaethon the bold 
 Fell from the chariot-sun : vortex and rock 
 By vexed Messina’s shore, worn voyagers old 
 Seemed toiling to escape, — yet swdftly broke 
 The billows o’er them, and they bowed beneath Death’s 
 
 [stroke. [13] 
 
236 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 And while these semblances l, wondering, saw, 
 
 With thousands more, mysterious music streamed 
 Upon my soul, refreshingly as blow 
 The evening gusts on toiling swains condemned 
 To reap all day, whilome the sun hath beamed 
 His fiercest fires : blythely their hook they ply 
 To win substantial good ; yet, when redeemed 
 From overheats, breathe joyously : — so I, 
 
 With sense of ease, listed the soothing minstrelsy. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 And soothing ’twas, though sad : a wildering strain 
 Unearthly, — or, if like to aught on earth, 
 
 Most like that theme which breathes her spirit’s pain — 
 The 4 Mater dolorosa’ [14] — with such birth 
 Of sweetness, that, once heard, we deem, thenceforth, 
 Grief-music thrills more deep deliciousness, — 
 
 Ay, more essential joy, — than strains of mirth ! 
 
 Most like that voice of rapturous distress 
 It was ; and, wordless, seemed these woe-thoughts to express : 
 
 XXXVII i. 
 
 4 Oh ! what shall quell Life’s universal sorrow P 
 4 In Hades’ realm of darkness, drear and deep 
 4 As Death’s, or where gloom-prison Earth doth borrow 
 4 Light from the gaudy sun, all creatures weep, 
 
 4 All spirits ache ! Duration on doth sweep, 
 
 4 Bringing no other change than newer w T oe ! 
 
 4 Oh ! that this waking to eternal sleep 
 4 Might change, and spirits cease to think and know : 
 For ever quenched Life’s inward like its outer glow ! 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 4 Oh ! what is youthful Love P — a torturous dream • 
 
 4 What conjugal affection ? — pain and tears : 
 
 4 What Life ? — capricious gift of Powers supreme 
 4 That mock Man’s hopes, and laugh at his weak fears: 
 
 4 Hath Virtue a reward ? — the wicked’s sneers : 
 
 ‘Hath Bliss existence ? — in the realm of Nought : 
 
 ‘Can Fate be shunned? — when being disappears ; 
 
 4 But all in Hades or on Earth who thought 
 4 And life inherit in her web of w r oe are wrought. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 237 
 
 XL. 
 
 ‘ Spirits, look onward ! — what do ye perceive ? 
 
 4 Woe-thought to come — a future filled with gloom — 
 
 4 Ages in which your essence still shall grieve 
 4 That it exists, and long for instant doom 
 • Of blank annihilation. Your old home 
 4 Look back upon ! What is Man’s journey thorough 
 4 Earth’s life ? Grief from the cradle to the tomb — 
 
 4 Toil-thought for bread to-day — a shroud to-morrow : 
 
 4 Oh, what shall quell, for aye, Life’s universal sorrow ?’ 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Th’ enraptured anguish of my spirit ceased, 
 
 For now this minstrelsy I heard no more ; 
 
 And every sculptured emblem, which a feast 
 Of visioned wonderment had set before 
 The soul’s interior self, evanished. Roar 
 Of multitudinous voices came, and crowd 
 On crowd of Sorrow’s suicides the shore 
 Of Darkness, in desponding phalanx, trode, 
 
 Wailing that they could not escape their being’s 
 
 XLII. 
 
 By thousands, the stern, giant Cimbri trooped, — 
 
 And Xanthians and Saguntines, — they who fled, 
 
 In olden times, from life, by act abrupt, 
 
 Rather than wear the conqueror’s yoke. [15] That dread 
 And sullen band of Jews who undismayed, 
 
 In old cathedralled York, by their own hand 
 Met death, to shun the fiendish vengeance spread 
 For their rack’d tribe, [16] stalked by on Darkness’ 
 strand. — 
 
 ’Twere long to tell the Sorrow-crowds my spirit scanned : — 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Of every age, and every mortal clime 
 They were; and ’twas appalling their array 
 To view, and think of nations choosing crime 
 Of suicide,— hasting themselves to slay, 
 
 Rather than be their butcherous brethren’s prey ! — 
 The multitudes had passed, and a slow river 
 Methought I reached, upon whose banks a gray 
 And solemn man whose every nerve did quiver 
 With woe, walked, murmuring at existence and the Giver* 
 
238 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XL1 V. 
 
 And him there met the noble Roman, — made 
 An ever-dining heritor of fame 
 Bv matchless Tully’s friendship, — though such aid 
 His own high sense and virtues might disclaim — 
 
 Were it not native to the sovereign flame 
 Of genius, like the sun, to render gleam 
 Of lesser lustres dull, and give a name, 
 
 Even to brightest things, less for their beam 
 Inherent, than the ray lent by its fire supreme. — 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Pomponius, hail ! — began the solemn sire ; — 
 
 Thee have I longed to meet in this demesne 
 Of mystic darkness, — for, until I tire 
 To loathing, have I walked with ghosts obscene, 
 Listening their threadbare tales of vulgar teen. 
 
 Friend of Rome’s noblest tongue and largest mind, — 
 Thee, calm Philosophy with thought serene 
 To bear unmoved the common woes assigned 
 To man, must have endowed : what subtle woe was joined 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Unto thy soul on earth, that thou its coil 
 
 Shook off? Could loftiest friendship, wealth, and ease, 
 
 With joys refined, thee fail to reconcile 
 
 To life ? O Atticus, while I had these, — 
 
 While on my peace no feminine fiend did seize 
 Dishonouring my children, and my own 
 Hoar age covering with shame, [17] — a gift to please 
 1 found Earth’s life, — not that insipid boon 
 Which some proclaim it, ere the mortal scene they shun. 
 
 XLVIl. 
 
 But thou hadst no soul-harrowing shame to meet 
 In every neighbour’s eye : men did not point 
 At thee the finger, — and, anon, repeat 
 The damning whisper, or the subtle hint, 
 
 Wherever thou wert seen. What mystic dint 
 Invisible of Sorrow’s sting could pierce 
 Thy heart, — and make the world seem so disjoint 
 That thou must flee it, hither to immerse 
 Thy soul in gloom P Roman, to me thy theme rehearse ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 239 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Pon f alba ! — for thy sorrow-notes reveal 
 Too truly, reverend mourner, who thou art — 
 The thoughtful Roman answered; — to unseal 
 My secret I will haste. Within the heart 
 1 ever wore this canker : that depart 
 I must, or late, or soon, — must yield my breath, 
 Unknowing of what joy or aftersmart 
 The soul inherits in the realm of Death, — - 
 Or whether he the spirit's flame extinguished. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Strong pain corporeal hurried me to take 
 My fatal step more early than, perchance, 
 
 I, otherwise, had sped from Life's heart-ache : 
 
 Yet, ease returned, long ere the severance 
 Was made ’tween clay and spirit; but, th' advance 
 Begun tow'rds Death, retreat more terrible 
 Appeared than the dread march: [18] — the sustenance 
 Of Life’s huge load, a second time ! — the spell 
 Half-broken to repair 1 — farewell, and yet farewell! — 
 
 L. 
 
 1 could not face such horror, for I knew 
 That I should hourly see my funeral urn, 
 
 And that more bitterly it would imbue 
 Life’s joy with sorrow, if I should return 
 When 1 had well-nigh reached the portal stern. 
 
 Oh, tell me, mourning sire, — if Death with thee 
 Was not the great Smile-queller ; the thought borne 
 For ever uppermost, that strangled Glee 
 Ev’n in its birth, — or made its breath an agony ! 
 
 LI. 
 
 I know not that it was, — the sire replied ; 
 
 It is my nation’s habit to avert 
 Despondency of thought in the gay tide 
 Of revelry ; and when to share the sport 
 Men cease, by age enfeebled, they resort 
 Still to the scene of mirth, to dissipate 
 Dull thoughts by seeing sprightly youth exert 
 Its agile limbs or jocund wit : sires sate 
 Their minds beholding sons their spirits recreate. 
 
240 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LIT. 
 
 Thy answer seemeth strange, — the Roman said : 
 
 To me, beholding what I could not share 
 For ever multiplied the heart’s dim dread 
 Of the approaching tomb : joys of the fair 
 And young ceased to be gladsome ; for the glare 
 O’ tli’ funeral torch gleamed on my mental sight. 
 Death — Death — was present with me everwhere, 
 Smirching the face of Nature with his blight. 
 Bereaving the worn heart of solace or delight.— 
 
 tin. 
 
 But why didst thou not mingle in the strife 
 Of public act or counsel ? — asked the soul 
 Of the gray Gallic sire ; — for thee Earth’s life 
 Had countless remedies for this strange dole. 
 
 Oh ! had thy lot beneath the restless rule 
 Of him who swayed my fatherland been cast, 
 
 The fever of the times had warmed thy cool 
 O’er-meditative brain, until Death’s vast 
 Reality had quelled the Shade whose slave thou wast. 
 
 LIV. 
 
 Th ou speakest, Spirit, as if strifeful Rome 
 Were some Arcadian grove, — replied the ghost 
 Of Attieus : — albeit, within her womb 
 Myriads with greed of fame or gold engrossed, 
 Resembled some insatiate wolvish host — 
 
 Ever in open cry for prey. In fear 
 Of its heart-tortures, public care I thrust 
 Far from me ; nor discern I, in this drear 
 Gloom-region, that its slaves than I aught happier were. 
 
 LV. 
 
 Fontalba ! for man’s soul no fixed good 
 There is : no state enfranchiseth the mind 
 From tyranny of Evil’s monster brood. 
 
 If in society men strive to find 
 Relief from megrim dullness, — ’mong their kind 
 They soon engender hate, even without 
 Design, and wash they never had repined 
 At solitude, although with dread or doubt [thought 
 They wrestled till compelled to shun their own 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 211 
 
 tv I. 
 
 Arul what say’st thou of thine own fitful race? 
 
 Life’s pulse beats not less healthfully’ in the \( m 
 Of the most feverous tenants of Earth’s space 
 Than it doth beat in theirs. Pleasures to pains, 
 
 Bv very eagerness, they turn: each drains 
 The joy-cup of the hour as if the world 
 Had not another for his draught. Contains [dirled, — 
 Not this woe-clime, — whom Pleasures zest brair- 
 Legions, from thy own land by mad self-murder hurled ? 
 
 LVII. 
 
 There is no human state exempt from woe. 
 
 If the lone thinker with a dread profound 
 Of death be haunted, — they who love the show 
 And strife of crowds carry within some w ound 
 From rival or proud tyrant who hath frowned 
 Upon their peace: and if dull solitude 
 Be irksome, — Pleasure’s gay and guilty round 
 As surely leads to madness. ’Tis a crude 
 Abortion of a world ; and Mind must be at feud 
 
 Lvm. 
 
 For ever with the Powers to whom it ow es 
 Existence — if volition they possess; 
 
 And if Necessity all being bow^s 
 Beneath its sceptre, at our wretchedness 
 We cannot but repine. — 
 
 Whence this excess 
 
 Of perverse discontent ? — a voice began : — 
 
 And lo! a crowded audience bodiless 
 I saw, — while through the host this murmur ran — 
 Meek Menedemus hear — the sage Eretrian !’ [ID] 
 
 LIX. 
 
 Whence this excess of perverse discontent? — 
 
 The sage reverbed : — dost thou so soon forget, 
 Illustrious Roman ! thy so late assent 
 To consolable thoughts, w hen thee I met 
 Nursing, as now, this vain, unwise regret ? 
 
 Alas, Hve all are too much prone to cling 
 To sorrow in this clime, and think our debt 
 To justice never will be paid. Yet spring 
 High hopes wdthin me— thoughts of rescue heralding ! 
 1C K 
 
242 
 
 TIIE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 O Atticus, T grieve that we the call 
 Fraternal of imperial spirits slighted, 
 
 Nor joined their descant in the mystic hall : 
 
 ^et, in their souls on whom hope hath alighted, 
 
 For Sorrows’ host in dreary realm benighted, 
 Compassion may be felt, till they renew 
 Their invitation. Not for ever blighted, 
 
 Brothers, is this our essence : hopes congrue 
 With deep discursive reason thus my mind to thew : 
 
 LX i. 
 
 It is not by unalterable law 
 
 That Evil’s tyranny Man’s spirit quelleth : 
 
 Brothers, in us, in all, a might to awe 
 The moral curse o’th’ universe indwelleth. 
 
 O when the sheen of Brotherhood unveileth 
 Its glory, how our happy race will ponder 
 And muse upon the Past, until it faileth 
 Their souls to tell — for ecstasy of wonder — [asunder! 
 What first could rend Man’s heart from brother-man 
 
 Lxrr. 
 
 When selfishness, by Love and Truth dispelled 
 From human spirits, ceaseth to mislead 
 With falsest sense of interest, — and ’tis held 
 A fiction foul that Nature hath decreed 
 Man only can be moved to generous deed 
 Of enterprize by personal reward ; 
 
 When Brotherhood returns, and hearts do feed 
 On richest bliss, toiling in disregard 
 Of self, and viewing their toil’s fruit by brethren shared ; 
 
 LX II I. 
 
 When Strength and Health their happiness derive 
 From knowledge that the produce of their toil 
 Is shared by Feebleness and Age ; when live 
 The men of Mind to kindle a heart-smile 
 Where’er they move, — disdaining to defile 
 Their names with titles, or their hands with gold, 
 
 And yearning every moment to beguile 
 Mankind to deeds of love and goodness bold, 
 
 Until the sun a world of mercy doth behold ; 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 213 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 Think ye that then the curse of Evil’s reign 
 Mankind shall know P Suffering will disappear; 
 
 For love and sympathy shall vanquish pain, 
 
 And gentlest pity shall the lorn heart cheer 
 Till sorrow’s stream for joy’s abounding tear 
 Is changed. ’Twill be a holy, gladsome scene — 
 
 Too holy for mad Pleasure to be there ! — 
 
 A world of Love and Truth and Peace serene — 
 
 A world of brother-hearts, whose joys are evergreen ! 
 
 LXV. 
 
 A world in which thy Death-fear, noble one ! 
 
 Can no more haunt the soul. Who will fear Death 
 When, with fraternal love Man’s course begun, 
 
 Hath been continued ? When to yield his breath 
 The hour is come, with this exalted faith 
 In gladness Man can die — 4 A world I leave 
 r Of happy brothers ! — my brief being hath 
 4 Increased its bliss ; and after-hearts shall cleave 
 4 To me through time, and with their songs my memory 
 
 ‘And if our thought surviveth mortal clay 
 4 My loving spirit for a world of love 
 4 Is fitted : if I think no more, — decay 
 4 Itself is welcome; since around, above, 
 
 4 Bliss, still progressing, is with being wove ; 
 
 4 And men, succeeding men, shall still proclaim 
 4 The bliss is but begun!’ — Thus men shall prove 
 Superior to death-dread, on earth : the flame 
 Of Brother-love, ’hove selfish fears exalting them! — 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 With visages of hope the mystic crowd 
 Stood, in expressive silence, as the soul 
 Of Menedemus ceased. Then, one who glowed 
 With nobler thought than when the venomed bowl, 
 
 To ’scape from hated Rome’s renewed control, 
 
 He, fearing vengeance, in fair Capua took, — 
 
 Rash Vibius Virius, [20] thus began to’ extol 
 The ’Eretrian’s theme : — 
 
 Forbear rebuke, [brook: 
 
 Meek sage! — but, henceforth, we this gloom shall hardly 
 
 r 2 
 
2.4 
 
 THE PURGATORY, ETC. 
 
 LX VI 1 1. 
 
 For who can list thee (ell of blooming bliss, 
 
 And brother-love for ever verdurous, 
 
 Xor long to quit a dreary clime like this? 
 
 , Tween Earth and Hades link mysterious 
 We spiritually feel; and bliss analogous 
 To Earth’s shall surely be our heritage : — 
 
 Yet, till kings cease their feuds calamitous, 
 
 And nations wear no more the conqueror’s badge, 
 Dost thou not dream — this reign of Mercy to presage ? 
 
 i.xix. 
 
 And, until monarch-spirits, in our clime, 
 
 Disown their lofty claims, what can make known, 
 
 By mystic sign, in penal land of crime, 
 
 That Hades’ crowds shall soon behold begun 
 The reign of Brotherhood ? O that the boon 
 Were near! — 
 
 Behold w T ho cometh! cried the host; 
 
 The spirit of thy friend, illustrious one! — 
 
 The friend o’ th’ bards most noble and robust 
 Of thy great land, — Varus, [21] — the thoughtful herald- 
 
 Hail, Atticus! — the herald cried, — and ye 
 Grief-brothers, who still nurse, in gloomiest land, 
 
 Your sorrow! Once again, high destiny 
 Of human spirits to search out, the band 
 Of heroes, sages, bards, and kings, divanned 
 In emblematic grandeur, ye conjure 
 To lend your aid! Brothers, full soon the brand 
 Of slavery shall, on earth, be known no more ! 
 Brothers, full soon bliss shall pervade this climature! 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 Tajce hope — take heart! Monarchs, themselves, display 
 Zeal for equality and brotherhood! — 
 
 O haste to leave your gloom, and, swift, away 
 Pursue with me your spirit-course, the Good 
 And Great to join in converse! 
 
 Like a flood 
 
 Of rapture burst the choral song — 4 We come !’ 
 
 From myriads hope-inspired; — and ere I viewed 
 From darkness their departure, out of gloom 
 1 passed — woke by that thrilling song’s exordium. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE EIGHTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza L-— The opening of an organ, in the gaol-chapel 
 ( which adjoined the “ day-room” apportioned to me and my 
 fellow-offenders), gave occasion to this and some of the fol- 
 lowing stanzas. In the scanty catalogue of prison-events, it 
 was one, to me, too exciting to be passed by either unfelt or 
 uncommemorated. 
 
 [2] Stanza 4. — The evidence that the unequalled “Old 
 Hundredth” is Martin Luther’s composition may be question- 
 able : I have yielded to the wish for having it regarded as 
 his, in the stanza. 
 
 I'll] Stanza 8. — “Courage my brother! we shall this day 
 light up a candle that will never be extinguished in Eng- 
 land !” — Latimer’s words to his fellow-martyr, Ridley, at the 
 stake. 
 
 [4] Stanza 12.— “ Rebellious needleman.” I find I am 
 slightly mistaken in the phrase, which I quoted from me- 
 mory, without means of correction. Here is the emphatic 
 passage from Mr. Carlyle’s magnificent unrhymed, unmetred 
 Epic : — “ Nor is our England without her missionaries. She 
 has her Paine : rebellious stayrnaker ; unkempt ; who feels 
 that, he, a single Needleman, did by his ‘ Common Sense ’ Pam- 
 phlet, free America ; — that he can and will free all this 
 world ; perhaps even the other.” — “ The French Revolution : 
 a History vol. 2, chap. iii. 
 
 [5] Stanza 17. — “ Peopled with wolves thy old inhabitants.” 
 2 Pt. of Hea. 4. — The quotation was tempting— for a rhyme ; 
 
246 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK TIIE EIGHTH. 
 
 but I almost feel as if I had committed a mortal sin in thus 
 literalizing in its application Shakspere’s sublime and sinewy 
 figure. 
 
 [6] Stanza 20. — Mozart’s last words— “ Now I begin to see 
 what might be done in music !” 
 
 [7] Stanza 22. — My venerable fellow-“ conspirator” and 
 fellow-prisoner (for the first year) John Richards, whose 
 seventy-first birth-day occurred on the first Christmas-day 
 we passed in the gaol. 
 
 [8] Stanza 31. — The mythic stories of Acis and Galatea 
 and the Cyclop Polyphemus, as well as that of Hero and 
 Leander, in this stanza, and of Orpheus and Eurydice in the 
 stanza preceding, I conclude to be known to every reader. 
 
 [9] Stanza 32. — The allusion is to Artemisia, queen of 
 Caria, who built the “ Mausoleum” which was esteemed one 
 of the “ Seven Wonders of the World,” over the ashes of 
 her husband Mausoleus, shut herself up in it, and perished 
 of grief. 
 
 [10] Stanza 32. — The great poet iEschylus, (according to 
 Pliny and Valerius Maximus,) being foretold by an oracle 
 that he would die by a falling ruin, retired into a field and 
 sat down to avoid fate : an eagle, however, let fall a tortoise 
 on his bald head and killed him instantly. — The allusion, it 
 need scarcely be said, is to Socrates, in the remainder of 
 this stanza, and in the beginning of the next. 
 
 [11] Stanza 33. — Cicero, Pliny, and others commemorate 
 the grandfather of Crassus, surnamed Ay tXacrros, who never 
 laughed but once, — namely, — when he saw an ass eat thistles, 
 and then his exclamation was, “Similes habent labra lac- 
 tucas” — Like lips like lettuces . 
 
 [12] Stanza 34. — Agamedes and Trophonius, architects of 
 the vestibule to the temple of Delphos,-— and Riton and 
 
NOTES TO KOOK THE EIGHTH. 
 
 247 
 
 Clcobis, sons of Cydippe, priestess- of Juno at Argos, — we are 
 told by Plutarch, in his Morals, were, alike rewarded with 
 death, by the gods, as the “ highest gift” that could be con- 
 ferred on deserving mortals. 
 
 [13] Stanza 35. — The allusions to the mirror of Praxiteles ; 
 the oracular cave of Trophonius, from which every visitor 
 returned a melancholy man ; Phaethon’s fall from Apollo’s 
 chariot ; and the dangerous navigation between Scylla and 
 Charybdis— I hope, need no lengthened explications. 
 
 [14] Stanza 37. — Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (I never heard 
 Rossini’s) is the “ theme” to which I allude. I never heard 
 it performed but once ; yet its pathetic power left an in- 
 delible impression on my memory. 
 
 [15] Stanza 42. — The Cimbri,to save themselves from what 
 they esteemed ignominious destruction by Marius ; the 
 Xanthians when besieged by Brutus ; and the Saguntines when 
 beleaguered by Hannibal — destroyed themselves. Readers 
 of history know that the catalogue of national suicides might 
 be enlarged immeasurably beyond the slight allusions in the 
 text. 
 
 [16] Stanza 42. — The suicidal massacre of the Jews of 
 York, to escape from the horrid persecution of the Christian 
 citizens, on the 11th of March, 1189, — is related at consider- 
 able length (from Roger Hoveden, Matthew Paris, and Wil- 
 liam Newburgh), by Drake, in his Hist, and Antiq. of York : 
 Book 1, chap. iv. 
 
 [17] Stanza 46 — 
 
 While on my peace no feminine fiend did seize, 
 
 Dishonouring my children, and my own 
 Hoar age covering with shame, &c. — 
 
 The brief account of M. de Pontalba, and his suicide, in 
 Winslow's “ Anatomy of Suicide,” is so absorbingly, hor- 
 rifically interesting that I transcribe it : — 
 
 “ M. de Pontalba was one of the great proprietors of 
 
248 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE EIGHTH. 
 
 France. Ilis son had been a page of Napoleon's and after- 
 wards a distinguished officer, aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, 
 and a protege of the Duke of Elchingen. He married the 
 daughter of Madame d’Almonastcr, and for some time they 
 lived happily ; but on the death of her mother, Madame de 
 Pontalba begau to indulge in such extravagances that even 
 the enormous fortune of the Pontalbas was unequal to it. 
 This led to some remonstrance on the part of her husband, 
 on the morning after which she disappeared from the hotel, 
 and neither he nor his children had any clue to her retreat. 
 At last, after an interval of some months, a letter arrived 
 from her to her husband, dated New Orleans, in which she 
 announced that she meant to apply for a divorce ; but for 
 eighteen months nothing more was heard of her, except by 
 her drafts for money. At last she returned, but only to 
 afflict her family. Her son was at the Military Academy or 
 St. Cyr. She induced him to elope, and the boy was plunged 
 in every species of debauchery and expense. This afflicted, 
 in the deepest manner, his grandfather, who revoked a be- 
 quest he had made him of about £4,000 a-year, and seemed 
 to apprehend from him nothing but future ruin and disgrace. 
 The old man, eighty two years of age, resided in his chateau 
 of Mont Leveque, whither, in October, 1834, Madame de 
 Pontalba went to attempt a reconciliation with the wealthy 
 senior. The day after her arrival she found she could make 
 no impression on her father-in-law, and was about to return 
 to Paris, when old M. de Pontalba, observing a moment when 
 she was alone in her apartment, entered it with a brace of 
 double-barrelled pistols, locked the door, and, approaching 
 his astonished daughter-in-law, desired her to recommend 
 herself to God, for that she had but few minutes to live; 
 but he did not even allow her one minute — he fired imme- 
 diately, and two balls entered her left breast. She started 
 up and fled to a closet, her blood streaming about, and ex- 
 claiming that she would submit to any terms, if he would 
 spare her.— “ No, no ! You must die !” he exclaimed, and 
 fired his second pistol. She had instinctively covered her 
 heart with her hand ; the hand was miserably fractured by 
 
KOTES TO BOOK THE EIGHTH. 
 
 249 
 
 the balls, but it saved her heart. She then escaped to 
 another closet, where a third shot was fired at her without 
 effect ; and at last she rushed in despair to the door, and 
 while M. de Pontalba was discharging his last barrel at her, 
 she succeeded in opening it. The family, alarmed by ti e 
 firing, arrived, and she was saved. The old man, on seeing 
 that she was beyond his reach, returned to his apartment, 
 and blew out his brains. It seemed clear that he had re- 
 solved to make a sacrifice of the short remnant of his own 
 life, in order to release his son and his grandson from their 
 unfortunate connexion with Madame de Pontalba. But he 
 failed — none of her wounds were mortal ; and within a month 
 after, Madame de Pontalba, perfectly recovered, in high 
 health and spirits, radiant, and crowned with flowers, was to 
 be seen at all the fetes and concerts of the capital.” Pp. 292 
 —294. 
 
 [IS] Stanza 49.- — It is a well-known relation that when 
 Pomponius Atticus (the friend of Cicero) had subdued a fever 
 by fasting, or medicine, in his 77th year, he refused to take 
 food, from an unwillingness to prolong life. 
 
 [19] Stanza 58. — Menedemus, is another of the suicides ot 
 antiquity who are described as escaping from life by refusing 
 food. False accusation of treason is stated to have been the 
 desperate provocative with this Socratic philosopher of 
 Eretria. 
 
 [20] Stanza 67. — Livy (lib. 26. cap. 13, 14), cells how Vibius 
 Virius advised the Capuans to revolt to Ilannibal, and, when 
 the city was retaken by the ltomans, took poison to escape 
 the vengeance of the victors. 
 
 [21] Stanza 69. — Quintilius Varus : I have, for the sake of 
 introducing another character, averted what is merely pro- 
 bable , — from Horace de Arte Poetica (438) the 18th Ode of 
 Book 1, and also the 24th. It is more generally believed 
 that Q. Varus the poet, and Q. Varus the commander of the 
 Itoman armies in Gaul, who slew himself because overcome 
 by the craft of Ariminus, were different persons. 
 

 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 PUKGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE NINTH. 
 
 ’Tis Woman’s voice! — woman in wailful grief, 
 
 Joined by her babe’s scarce conscious sympathy. 
 
 Thy wife hath come to take her farewell brief, 
 
 Gaunt felon ! — brief and bitter must it be 
 For thy babe’s mother, since the wide salt sea 
 Must roll, for life, its deep, dark gulph between 
 Thee, convict, and that form of agony ! 
 
 Poor wretched thing! well may she wail, I ween. 
 
 And wring her hands, and wish that she had never been ! 
 
 ti. 
 
 4 Let me have one last kiss of my poor babe !* 
 
 He saith, and clingeth to the grate. Oh ! how 
 The turnkey’s answer will his bosom stab ! 
 
 ‘ Away ! — we open not the bars !’ — and, lo ! 
 
 They push him rudely back ! — he may not know 
 What baleful bliss it gives to clasp a child 
 Or wife, ere one must yield them to life’s woe. 
 
 Ah ! little had that kiss his grief beguiled ; 
 
 But, rather, filled his soul with after-throes more wild. 
 
 iii. 
 
 She fainteth! — yet awakes to moan and weep ! 
 
 How little didst thou think that smiling morn 
 
 Thou didst, so early and so eager, peep 
 
 Into thy mirror, and thy breast adorn 
 
 With virgin rose, so soon the sorrow-thorn 
 
 Would there have pierced ! — that thou, in two short years, 
 
 Wouldst see thy husband in that dress of scorn: 
 
 And turn, a widowed bride — a thing of tears — 
 
 From that stern grate, forlorn, to meet the world’s rude 
 
 [jeers! 
 
THE rURGATORY 
 
 2V2 
 
 IV. 
 
 Poor sufferer! how wilt thou the future brook ! 
 
 To drudge from morn to eve for beggar’s bread ; 
 To hear thy ragged child receive rebuke 
 For his sire’s sins, that on the exile’s head 
 Already fall full sore; to see him shed 
 Tears when he asks for food, and thou hast none 
 To stop his hunger; then, to make thy bed 
 With him upon the heath or moorland lone, — 
 Unless, for infamy, thou tak’st the rich man’s boon ! 
 
 v. 
 
 What misery, hadst thou never been a bride, 
 
 Thy heart had shunned! Yet, thou wilt fondly elit g 
 Unto the memory of thy love, nor chide, 
 
 Ev’n by a thought, in deepest suffering, 
 
 His error, who did thy young joy-bloom bring 
 
 To desolation! Ill requited love 
 
 Was thine, ev’n from the bridal-revelling; 
 
 Yet, thou forgavest all, nor didst reprove 
 The wild excess which oft thee nigh to madness drove. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Oh Woman ! how thy truest worth is slighted; 
 
 Thy tenderness how often met with hate; 
 
 Thy fondest, purest hopes, how often blighted; 
 
 How Man, the tyrant, lords it o’er thy fate, 
 
 Yet feigns for thy benign behests to wait; 
 
 How jealously he guards thy faithfulness, 
 
 And frowns a censure on thy every state: 
 
 Thy chastity terms coldness ; thy caress 
 Weak fooling, stratagem, or grosser love’s excess 1 
 
 VII. 
 
 Oh Woman ! fairest, frailest, sweetest flower 
 Of Nature’s garden, what rude storms thee bend! 
 
 Thv heart, thou priceless, peerless, matchless dower 
 Of Nai lire’s treasury, what sufferings rend ! 
 
 How meanly men, through selfishness, contend 
 To pamper thee ! — how sWkenly their lays 
 Of love they lisp to gai n their guilty end ; 
 
 How sensually Man lauds thy beauty’s blaze; 
 flow heartlessly deserts thee in its dimmer days ! 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 253 
 
 vi 1 1. 
 
 Oh Woman ! what anxieties destroy 
 The bliss thou dreamest none can take away 
 When hushing thy soft care — thy cradled joy! 
 How Time the blessings thy fond hopes pourtray 
 Oft turns to curses, and thy heart a prey 
 To keenest woe condemns: maternal woe, 
 
 That like maternal love, the human clay 
 Moves more intensely than severest throe 
 Or most ecstatic thrill that mortal bosoms know. 
 
 ix. 
 
 Mysterious bonds of Nature ! can ye be 
 Without a wise Deviser? Hath a blind 
 Necessity, indeed, implanted ye? 
 
 Are ye not proofs of All-pervasive Mind? 
 
 Hath Goodness, then, these spirit-throes designed, 
 Still mingled with the mother’s cup of bliss? 
 Wherefore, oh wherefore, still must mortals find 
 Mystery ne’er lessen, but, for aye, increase 
 Beneath their feeble search, or frail analysis ? 
 
 x. 
 
 Ay, Woman ! — for thy mother-heart remain 
 The keenest agonies ; to see revealed 
 Passions that do defy thee to restrain 
 Their baneful germs, and which, thou know 7 ’st must yield 
 A deadly fruit; to see thy young fiower fell’d 
 In its sweet promise; or to be bereft 
 Of it by ruthless power that tyrants wield 
 O’er Poverty ; and, though thy heart be cleft 
 With sorrowing, no sight of it to be vouchsafed! 
 
 XI. 
 
 4 Thou pampered tyrant who dost crush the Poor! 
 
 ‘ Alien of Nature from thy mother’s womb ! 
 
 4 Who never sucked the breast of her that bore 
 4 Thy most unnatural self! Thou humoursome 
 4 Wealth-wanton, who dost send thy child from home, 
 
 4 Or call’st a hireling, Life’s sweet stream to give 
 1 Unto thy babe! What wonder that ye doom 
 4 The Poor to pain?— since in ye doth not live 
 * A natural heart, how 7 can ye Nature’s pain perceive ? 
 
254 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 * Ye artificial things in blood and breath, 
 
 ‘ What human creatures feel how can ye tell ?’ 
 
 Tush ! raving mother, — the rich wanton saith 
 Thy pangs are feigned, and whipping should dispel 
 Thy discontent! Oh! ye will wake the yell 
 Of reckless violence around ye yet, 
 
 Tyrants ! unless ye, timely, bid the knell 
 Be tolled of dasmon-legislation ! — 
 
 Let 
 
 Me strive that theme of rending heart-ache to forget ! — 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Oh Woman ! what illustrious children thine 
 Oft prove ev’n when thy fate and theirs seems dark. 
 Slave-mother of old Smyrna, who didst pine 
 In grief, and in lorn hope thy babe embark 
 On Meles’ stream, cradled in that frail ark, 
 
 How little didst thou dream thy infants glory 
 Would beam through Time ; and he, the patriarch 
 Of song become, all bards and sages hoary 
 Transcend in honour, through the world, to latest story ! 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Or, if thy Homer, and the child on Nile, 
 
 The ‘babe’ that ‘wept,’ but soon proud Pharaoh’s might 
 Defied, and led those thousands on their toil 
 Through the drear wilderness, the Canaanite 
 To dispossess, — if these, to read aright 
 Their story, Reason must as Myths regard — 
 
 Fertile in moral, albeit overdight 
 With marvel — Mothers in late times have reared 
 Their sons in want, yet seen them win Fame’s high reward. 
 
 xv. 
 
 How thy best children, Woman, testify 
 A mother’s worth, — attributing their zest 
 For enterprise, or love of good, to thy 
 Exalting nurture ! 0 let him attest 
 
 A mother’s worth — that Titan of the West — 
 Unequalled Washington ! And if such men, 
 
 That dwarf princes, vigour from thy meek breast 
 Now draw, Woman ! what will thy sons be when 
 Man looks on thee no longer with the tyrant’s ken P 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 255 
 
 XVI. 
 
 When chivalry’s false homage is forgot; 
 
 When eastern jealousy no more immures 
 And renders thee a vernal idiot; 
 
 When thy young purity no villain-lures 
 Are spread to blemish ; when thy mind matures 
 In freedom, and thy soul can make its choice, 
 Untrammelled, unconstrained, where heart assures 
 The heart it is beloved ; shall not thy voice 
 And look restore to Earth its long-lost Paradise ? 
 
 XVII. 
 
 That Mind is of no sex, when thou art freed, [sense ; 
 Thy thought-deeds shall proclaim : our Edgeworth’s 
 Our Baillie’s truthful skill; Felicia’s meed 
 Of grace with perfectest mellifluence 
 Of music joined ; or thy magnificence 
 Of heart and reason, Necker’s glorious child ! 
 
 Problems shall be no more : Woman’s intense 
 Inherent claim to mind-rank, when .befoiled 
 No more by Man, she will display with glow unsoiled. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 And when her children see her move in joy, 
 
 And yet in truest dignity ; no more 
 A slave, no more a drudge, no more a toy ! 
 
 When from her lips of love her spirit’s store 
 Of high ennobling wisdom she doth pour 
 Into her offspring’s ears, — into their eyes, 
 
 Ere speech be learnt, looks Nature’s purest lore 
 Of truth and virtue, — shall not Man arise 
 From error, nurtured thus, and loftiest good devise ? 
 
 XIX. 
 
 These day-dreams past of Woman’s destiny, 
 
 To Man’s auxiliar in beatitude, 
 
 The brain in sleep, instinct with phantasy, 
 
 But credent of its day-dreams, still pursued 
 The theme. A verdant pasture plain, I viewed, 
 Unbounded, in that mystic spirit-land 
 Where mortals who have ventured to denude 
 The soul of clay without His high command — 
 
 The great Life-Giver — feel his stern corrective hand. 
 
THE PURGATORY 
 
 256 
 
 Bat now, the end of punishment seemed near, 
 
 And spirits talked of blest, participance 
 In life set free from pain and woe, and fear, — 
 While I beheld them in thronged groups advance, 
 On journey bent to hear the utterance 
 Of their high manumission. Prankt the plain 
 Appeared with llowers of wild luxuriance 
 Of growth and deep intensity of stain ; 
 
 But unto them no gloss nor perfume did pertain. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Their dyes seemed of such depth as dyes of flowers 
 At summer’s even, when the garish sun 
 Hath set, and either human eyes new powers 
 Receive, bedazed no longer, — the* air hath won 
 Strength to assist the optic nerve, or on 
 The flowers themselves sheds nitrous particles 
 That deepen colours : thus they glowed, not shone 
 A rich array of blossoms, buds, and bells, 
 
 So fragrant to the eye, Fancy supplied their smells. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 And ever and anon some feminine form, — 
 
 For souls of men appeared not in my dream, — 
 Stooped to select some favourite from the swarm 
 Of floral beauties, and then wound the stem 
 Within her hair: others an anadem 
 Of varied blossoms wove, and, garlanded, 
 Discoursing rapturously of their high theme, 
 Smiling, across the pleasant pasture sped : — 
 Blythe sight it was to see, in soul-land of the Dead. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Nor unfamiliar seemed their faces fair, 
 
 Their names and deeds, unto the dream-rapt soul : 
 Though many a suicide of Eld was there : 
 
 Full many a virgin whom old bards extol 
 For spotless chastity, and of whose dole 
 They make sweet plaint : full many a wife 
 Of high heroic virtue that with cool 
 Resolve chose death by poison-cup or knife, 
 in the wave, — disdaining a dishonoured life. 
 
OF SUICIDES, 
 
 257 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 And groupes passed by who fled from widowhood 
 Through love excessive for their bosoms’ lords ; 
 
 And throngs appeared that nobly shed their blood 
 In patriotic struggle, when the swords 
 Of tyrants slew their sons and sires, or hordes 
 Of foreign foes sought to pollute their homes ; 
 
 And forms were there whom History records 
 For questionable deeds, or whom Truth dooms 
 To infamy, — though Fraud writ praises on their tombs. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 From out a Roman groupe, methought, there passed 
 
 Into a daisied bye-path, matrons twain 
 
 Whose sable locks with hyacinths were graced ; 
 
 To their dark eyes a fervour did pertain 
 That found its reflex in that sapphire stain : 
 
 Intensely truthful was their spirits’ glow ; 
 
 And, as mine joined them, on the green champaign, 
 
 I pondered deeply on their mortal throe, 
 
 And cause for which they did that death-pang undergo. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The tw^ain were — Cato’s daughter, Brutus’ spouse — 
 Illustrious suicidal lineage ! — 
 
 Whose death, so horridly courageous, 
 
 Old legends tell ; and she who to assuage 
 Fear in her husband — by the tyrant’s rage 
 Death-doomed — plunged to her heart the steel, and cried 
 ‘ It is not painful !’ — smiling, while the pledge 
 So dread she gave of love. These, side by side, — 
 Porcia and Arria, [1] — o’er the plain, conversing hied. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Say, sister spirit ! — Cato’s daughter spake, — 
 
 Seems it not, now, to thee, but yesterday 
 We did great Rome, our glorious home, forsake, 
 
 To rush on death ? Now they are passed away, 
 
 The ages of our pain, in mind’s survey, 
 
 Seem nought ; and yet, how drear in passing ! Earth 
 Produceth self-same thought and feeling : they 
 Who sorrow reckon ages from the birth [mirth. 
 
 Of woe; but say ’twas shoit, when tears are changed for 
 
 17. s 
 
258 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Arria replied : such are my thoughts of weal 
 And woe on earth, my sister, and of joy 
 That doth the sorrows of our essence heal 
 In this strange afterstate, and mind upbuoy 
 With cheering faith that, henceforth, no alloy 
 Shall mingle with our bliss. Yet, oft, our thought 
 Shall wander back, and memory employ 
 Her power to re wake many an image fraught 
 With tenderness — earth-forms on which the soul will doat. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Oh! never can the hours of youthful love 
 Cease to be precious, nor from memory fade, 
 
 Amid the highest rapture we may prove 
 Of that beatitude which shall pervade 
 Hades for ever ! — 
 
 Nor shall aught upbraid 
 The heart, — Porcia rejoined,-— for this its truth 
 To what it chastely loved ; but, rather, aid, 
 
 From sweet revisitings of joys of youth, 
 
 The spirit shall derive for its eternal growth. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Ay, to the purest thoughts of Life’s young spring 
 Oft shall tfie ever-growing soul return, 
 
 Drawn by the good each visit thence shall bring 
 To the advancing spirit — which shall yearn 
 For loftier good the further it is borne 
 From evil : thus our minds boon sustenance 
 Deriving from the Past, and w r hat we learn 
 Of noblest kindred’s high participance 
 Of virtue, shall enlarge into a blest expanse. 
 
 XXXI. - 
 
 And dost thou think it shall be thus, indeed ? 
 
 Said Arria : shall our essence still expand 
 In bliss the more on virtue it doth feed, 
 
 On soft beneficence, and breathings bland 
 
 To bless — much more than to be blest? How grand, 
 
 How glorious, then, is human nature ! — frail 
 
 And puny though they termed it who had scanned, 
 
 Or thought they scanned, its strength. Oh, that Mind’s 
 Some Pow r er had rent w r hile in its house terrestrial ! [veil 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 259 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Not wholly secret, sister, was the true 
 Sublimity of Man, — said Porcia; — some 
 There were in every age and clime, though few, 
 
 Who taught that goodness, and not awe and gloom, 
 Must nurture the soul’s bud until its bloom 
 Should be unfolded into noblest bliss : 
 
 The distant East, fair Greece, and our own Rome 
 Possessed such sages, — though the Priest’s device 
 Thwarted them evermore : — with force, or artifice. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Ev’n in Earth’s infancy a sage arose 
 In Orient far, who taught how purely blest 
 The spirit grew that could fo'rgive its foes ; 
 
 How happiness was won by scorn of rest 
 And ease, and choice of toil — to the distrest, 
 
 In body or in mind, to bring relief : 
 
 And after-sages did these truths attest : 
 
 Alas ! too oft by violent death their brief 
 Love-toil was stayed : for Falsehood still held Man’s belief! 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 Put who is this the wider way that leaves 
 To cross our path, as if she sought to speak 
 Of some glad birth her joyous soul conceives ? — 
 
 Hail, Carthaginian sister ! — to the meek, 
 
 But fervid form, — Porcia said on, — thy cheek 
 Intensely glows, the gentle fire o’th’ heart 
 Revealing : say, what blissfulness dost seek 
 To tell, that thrills thee, now our penal smart [part ! 
 Is past ? Haste, blythesome one, thy joy-thought to im- 
 
 xxxxv. 
 
 By sympathy, I knew that your discourse 
 Was of the power of Goodness, and I yearned 
 To hear ye its blest eulogy rehearse, — 
 
 The wife of Asdrubal answer returned : — 
 
 For she it was: — the same who nobly scorned 
 To join her craven lord in traitorous flight 
 To Scipio, and with her two children burned 
 Within the sacred pyre herself did light, 
 
 Mid the beleaguered city, in the Roman’s sight. [2]— 
 
 s 2 
 
; 260 
 
 THE PURUATOll i' 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 Oh ! well mayst thou the theme of gentleness 
 Desire to list, — said Arria, — for thy clime 
 Bruised by our sires’ ambition ’neath excess 
 Of humbled suffering sank ; and though sublime 
 Was thy death-deed, it was fell War’s great crime 
 That drove thee to that act. — 
 
 But, now ’tis past, 
 
 Rejoined the Carthaginian, — to o’erbrim 
 Joy’s cup it seems that, though your sires laid waste 
 My own loved fatherland, my heart hath ye embraced. — 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 And, sister, in our hearts we thee embrace, 
 
 Said Porcia, — and partake thy bosom’s thrill : 
 
 So blest is goodness that it can efface 
 All baneful hatreds, — yea doth sweetly fill 
 The soul with rapture that no more the will 
 Is anger’s slave, — and spite can tribulate 
 The mind no more — that self-tormenting ill ! 
 
 For we of misery, in our earthly state, 
 
 1 new no more vulturous torture than relentless hate. 
 
 XXXVII 1. 
 
 Sad and blythe truths thy soul hath mingled, said 
 The virtuous African ; and ’tis most strange 
 In man’s strange history, that, ev’n while he bled, 
 
 He coaxed this vulture of the heart: — ‘ Revenge 
 4 Is sweet’ — he madly cried ! 0 blissful change, 
 
 That, now, he feels ’tis sweeter to forgive ! 
 
 Still happier — that no ill shall disarrange 
 The harmony in which all life shall live 
 Henceforth — but bliss of higher bliss be nutritive. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 How oft the soul revolted, while on earth, 
 
 Against the ill that did her powers enslave ! 
 
 How oft she fled from gloom to think on mirth, 
 Feeling it was her birthright, though some knave, 
 
 In sanctimonious guise, upon the grave 
 Would teach her still to ponder, and abjure 
 All joy ! How oft, in spite of wrongs, she clave 
 Unto the nobleness of love — the pure 
 Delight of shewing that though wronged we can endure 
 
OP SUICIDES. 
 
 261 
 
 XL. 
 
 The wrong, and still forgive, and still endure ! 
 
 How oft, in spite of all misteachings, Mind, 
 
 Irked by revenge, turned to the cynosure 
 Of Gentleness, and for its pleasaunce pined ! 
 
 ’Twas Nature’s truthful impulse! — so thy blind 
 But cheerful face she teacheth fealty 
 
 Unto the sun, on earth! 
 
 She stooped, and twined 
 A glowing marigold, full tastefully, 
 
 Within her hair ; then onward went, with modest glee. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 And still the descant was pursued, till two 
 More sister-spirits crossed the pasture-plain. 
 
 And sought with these the descant to pursue : 
 
 The chaste Sophronia, who dishonour’s stain 
 To ’scape, lied, by her husband’s will, self-slain, 
 
 The lust-blight of Maxentius ; [3] and with her 
 That famous Jewess whom old Rabbins vain 
 For wisdom praise, — Baruna, wife of Meir, — 
 
 Of deep Talmudic lore the fair interpreter.[4] 
 
 XL1I. 
 
 Our Teacher taught us to forgive, — the chaste 
 Sophronia said ; — but, sister fair, the Law 
 Of old thy fathers reverenced nurtured haste 
 For vengeance : our new joys for thee must flow 
 
 With tenfold sweetness. 
 
 Christian, though I know 
 Thou speakest sooth, Baruna said, — too well 
 I also know, that few forgave a foe 
 Who owned thy Teacher, and were loud to tell 
 How far he did in wisdom all the Wise excel. 
 
 XLI 1 1. 
 
 I own that much was noble in thy faith ; 
 
 But, like all other faiths, — alas ! ’twas made 
 Subservient unto tyrant Power and Wrath, 
 
 And grew, with lapse of time, a cunning trade 
 Whereby the priest could pompously parade 
 In gold and grandeur, while his lessons told 
 Of meekest lowliness ; and he could wade 
 In human blood, ungainsayed, uncontrolled,— 
 Preaching of mercy and of goodness manifold ! 
 
262 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 What horrors have my race endured throughout 
 All lands called Christian, from the men called meek 
 And merciful ! Who did the Jew belowt 
 And scorn and spit upon, and on the cheek 
 Smite fierceliest, was deemed, by all, to seek 
 Salvation zealously, and was upheld 
 Worthiest imitation. So to sneak 
 Into dim dens my race were driven : filth-celled 
 They lived : vile things from human fellowship expelled 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Nor in their squalidness was refuge found 
 From Christian mercy: ‘Witchcraft! — Gold !’ outcried 
 The plundering knave whose spotless robe around 
 Him did proclaim his office was to chide 
 And not to cheer Maids thirst for homicide : 
 
 Then was the shrunk Jew racked, and to the flame 
 Condemned, or, like thy Teacher, crucified, 
 
 If he refused the secret hoard to name 
 He never had possessed ! Such was their Christian game ! 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 I need not tell of Spain’s black ‘ Brotherhood’ 
 
 Of murder, yclept ‘ Holy,’ — nor recal 
 To mind the wolvish bands whose thirst for blood 
 Jew-slaughter could not slake, — who fed on all 
 That bore the name of Man, if one their thrall 
 Resisted, or hut murmured at their sway : — 
 
 ’Tis past ! No more their horrors shall appal 
 The feeble, nor afflict the strong: away [decay ? 
 
 Their shapes are faded : who would wake them from 
 
 XLVIl. 
 
 Be ours the theme more welcome, sisters mine, 
 
 To picture the blest future and prepare 
 Our spirits for the rest — the rest divine 
 The persecuted, hence, shall ever share 
 Ev’n with their persecutors : for the slayer 
 Shall with his victims join — to slay no more ! 
 
 The lion with the lamb shall make his lair ! 
 
 Rude, they were termed — yet, my sires’ faith, of yore. 
 The curtain of man’s future bliss asunder tore : 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 263 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Amid their sterile mountains, Judah’s bards 
 Saw holier visions of Earth’s coming glory 
 Than all the minstrels who the world’s awards 
 Of honour won, chaunting of warriors gory 
 And lauding as sublime Fame’s transitory 
 Triumphs. List, sisters, to that choral strain ! 
 
 How like the raptures of prophetic story 
 It swells! — 
 
 Heart’s-ease she plucked, and did retain 
 But, to the Christian gave a lily without stain. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 And then the happy sister sprites joined hands, 
 
 And sped, a silent yet ecstatic throng, 
 
 Their flower-bespangled way ; while distant bands 
 
 Of cheery travellers did this strain prolong 
 
 Till gladsome thousands swelled the choral song : — 
 
 ‘ Farewell for ever to the reign of gloom, 
 
 * Of human suffering, and grief, and wrong! 
 
 ‘ Welcome, for Earth, her new and happy doom ! 
 
 * Welcome, for franchised spirits, Hades’ blissful home ! 
 
 L. 
 
 Farewell for ever to the darksome reign 
 ‘Of Fear and Hate, Revenge and Tyranny! 
 
 ‘ How blest, that Hades shall be free from pain ! 
 
 ‘ How blest that children upon earth shall be 
 ‘ No more taught malice on their mothers’ knee ; 
 
 ‘ But love for foes — till foes are no more found ! 
 
 ‘ Farewell to Earth’s old evil revelry 
 ‘ Of war and bloodshed ! Every brother’s wound 
 ‘Shall now be healed; and peace and love and joy 
 
 [abound !’ — 
 
 LI. 
 
 Beneath the mound, into the sculptured aisle, 
 Trooping, with glee, I saw the thousands wend, 
 Still pealing hymns of joy that their exile 
 Was changed from woe to bliss, and that the end 
 Of all Life’s evils blest signs did portend 
 On earth, and through that spiritual clime ! 
 
 But I surceased the theme to apprehend: 
 
 The prison-bell, with its harsh grating chime, 
 Rewoke me in the dreary den of Crime-made crime. 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE NINTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza 26. — The suicides of Porcia, — by shallowing 
 hot coals, when other means of self-destruction were placed 
 beyond her reach ; and of Arria, the wife of Poetus, who was 
 condemned to death, are familiar to almost every reader : 
 the first is the subject of eloquent eulogy by Cicero, and the 
 last is termed “ the sublime’’ by Voltaire. 
 
 [2] Stanza 35. — The story of the wife of Asdrubal, who 
 cursed the treason of her husband, and then threw herself, 
 with her children, into the flames of the temple of Esculapius, 
 which she had set on fire, is well known to all readers of 
 lioman history. 
 
 [3] Stanza 41. — “The virtuous matron, who stabbed her- 
 self to escape the violence > + Maxentius, was a Christian, 
 wife to the procfect of the city, and her name was Sophronia. 
 It still remains a question among the Casuists, whether on 
 such occasions, suicidi is justifiable/' — /ribbon : note to 
 chap. 14. 
 
 [4] Stanza 41.—“ Baruna, wife of Meir — Basnage, “His* 
 toire des Juifs,” or the Appendix to Jahn’s “ Hebrew Com- 
 monwealth” (collected from the voluminous work of Bas- 
 nage) may be referred to for a brief narrative of this suicide. 
 
THE 
 
 PURGATORY OP SUICIDES. 
 
 BOOK THE TENTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 Hail, holiest Liberty ! who hast thy shrine 
 Deep in the faithful patriot’s soul recess’d, — 
 Diffusing from thy visage light divine 
 That glads the dungeon’s gloom and drear unrest, 
 Until it beams with visions overblest 
 Of Right triumphant over hoary Wrong, 
 
 And Truth victorious over Fraud confest, 
 
 And new-born nations joining choral song 
 O’er earth — become one temple for thy brother-throng. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Hail, sun-bright Liberty! Life-source of Truth, 
 Without whom Knowledge waxeth sere, and falls 
 Into her dotage; while with lusty youth 
 Thou sinewest Reason till she disenthrals 
 Her essence of Time’s dreams, nor basely crawls 
 At eld Authority’s decrepid feet ; 
 
 But to the toil of search calmly upcalls 
 Her vigour, and full soon each plausive cheat 
 Detects, and winnoweth Folly’s chaff from Wisdom’s wheat 
 
 iii. 
 
 Thou great palladium of the moral man, 
 
 If thee by sloth self-treasonous he lose, 
 
 Or foiled by force, or duped by charlatan 
 How soon the serfish spirit doth diffuse 
 Its influence through blood, and bones, and thews 
 Until his very form, his brow, his look, 
 
 Forfeit their grandeur, and each gesture shews, 
 
 Ere the low whine follows his lord’s rebuke, 
 
 What depth of insult, now, his slavish soul can brook I 
 
266 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 IV. 
 
 But, garbed in humblest gear, if his birthright 
 Be yet unbartered, unpurloined, unstained; 
 
 If still his forehead bear thy sigil bright; 
 
 How noble is his mien, how unconstrained 
 He stands a witness for the truth, unfeigned, 
 
 Or champion for the right, o’erawing kings 
 And lordly powers, who feel as if arraigned 
 Before their culprit ; and with homagings 
 Are fain to bow, and own themselves but meaner things. 
 
 v. 
 
 With dignity so godlike, stood the sage 
 Of Abdera, at Nicocreon’s throne, 
 
 Foiling the Cyprian tyrant in his rage: [l] 
 
 So stood the Caledonian captive one, 
 
 Grand in his chains, — and from the Roman throne 
 Constrained regard : so gazed, with brow unblent, 
 
 On vengeful Edward, Scotia’s later son: 
 
 So, while base Gesler shook, magnificent, 
 
 Stood Tell the peerless peasant, in his hardiment. 
 
 vr. 
 
 Or what if Death, with grisliest terrors, scowl 
 On thy brave offspring ? — They can gaze and smile ! 
 So, in our age of grandest men, with soul 
 Unpierced, that spirit universatile, 
 
 Untiring Raleigh, at the axe could smile, 
 
 Passing his finger calmly o’er the edge, 
 
 And cleping it a med’cine sharp, the while, 
 
 But most^remedial sickness to assuage, — 
 
 Conscious Death could not mar his fame’s high heritage. 
 
 VII. 
 
 So smiled our bravest, truest, martyred sire, 
 
 Fell Superstition’s victim, who could cheer, 
 
 With heart that veritably quelled the fire, 
 
 His brother sufferer, and more frail compeer, — 
 Breathing those death -words that will fill the ear, 
 
 And thew the heart of England, through all time, 
 Until her children a mind-rampart rear 
 Shall foil the Jesuit’s craft, and save our clime 
 From witnessing, again, the Priest’s bold deeds of crime. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 267 
 
 VIII. 
 
 So smiled thy own, thy darling champion, 
 
 A true-horn Briton names not without pride 
 That thrills the soul— our noble Algernon, 
 
 Who gloried at the scaffold that he died 
 
 For thine — the Good Old Cause, — nor falsified 
 
 The promise of his youth. When, from thy womb, 
 
 Mv country! shall such men be multiplied? 
 
 0 Liberty! o’er England’s germs resume 
 Thy quickening power, — or wake our fathers from the tomb! 
 
 • IX, 
 
 We are become a servile, sordid crew : 
 
 The grandeur of our lineage is forgot : 
 
 We crawl as if nor peer nor franklin knew 
 His fathers walked erect, and parleyed not 
 With Patience ere their swords the tyrant smote, 
 
 Or humbled him to meekness: we ne’er turn 
 Unto the page where their great deeds are wrote, 
 
 And read, and ponder, till our bosoms burn [worn ! 
 To think the yoke they spurned, so long our necks have 
 
 x. 
 
 Our men of promise are a recreant horde : 
 
 Ev’n he who bears that glorious patriot name 
 For which the friend of Sydney a record, 
 Gold-writ, hath won on England’s roll of fame, 
 Starts, like an actor who hath oped the drame, 
 Back from his part, afeard to play it through : 
 And he, the golden-tongued, — a thing of shame 
 Made by his whims, — to self-respect untrue, — 
 What will he next — the spaniel of old Waterloo? 
 
 XI. 
 
 Oh ! haste to hide thee in the charnel grave, 
 
 Thou Harlequin-Demosthenes !— ere change 
 Shall leave thee not a semblant speck to save 
 Of that rich monument which thou, with strange 
 Fatuity, hast toiled to disarrange 
 As hotly as to carve ! Give up thy strife 
 To mar it more; and list the White’s revenge, 
 
 Friend of the Black ! ’Twill cleave to thee through life — 
 The ‘ Bastile’-curse — from Man severed from child and wife! 
 
268 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XII. 
 
 Arch-Traitor to thy kind ! Scourge of the Poor 
 A word from thee had dashed their poison-cup 
 To atoms; but thou, wantonly, didst more 
 Prefer to their lean lips to hold it up ! 
 
 Ay, wast to thine own vanity the dupe 
 So fully, as to claim that thou sjiouldst bear 
 The dread weight of the crime! Would thoumight’st sup 
 For ages of that chalice ! 4 Bastile’-fare, 
 
 Perchance, a med’cine were thy reason to repair. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Beshrew thy heart! but it was bold, as well 
 As villainous,-— responsibility 
 To court — so foully, darkly damnable ! 
 
 Head-robber of the savage band to be 
 Should perpetrate on human misery 
 A theft so daring as would make recoil 
 The sternest heart of ancient Tyranny ! — 
 
 Of Nature’s rights the hapless wretch to spoil — 
 
 Who hath no bread, because his lords refuse him toil. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And dost thou, scouted changeling ! madly dream 
 This lawless law will save * their lordships’ land ?* 
 
 Or, that to gaol and eunuch men the stream 
 Of discontent can stop ; and Misery’s band 
 Convert to sneaking slaves lords may command 
 At will ? As surely as thy head grows gray 
 In this thy monstrous sin, — if not by brand, 
 
 By mightier means, the Poor will win their way 
 To right, — and shout when worms hold riot in thy clay ! 
 
 xv. 
 
 O ! not by changeling, tyrant, tool, or knave, 
 
 Thy march, blest Liberty ! can now be stayed : 
 
 The wand of Guttemberg —behold it wave! 
 
 The spell is burst! — the dark enchantments fade 
 Of wnnkled Ignorance! ’Twas she betrayed 
 Thy first-born children ; and so oft threw down 
 The mounds of Freedom. Lo ! the Book its aid 
 Hath brought ! The feudal serf — though still a clown, 
 Doth read ; and, where his sires gave homage, pays — a 
 
 [frown ! 
 
OF SUICIDES, 
 
 269 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The sinewy artisan, the weaver lean, 
 
 The shrunken stockinger, the miner swarth, 
 
 Head, think, and feel; and in their eyes the sheen 
 Of burning thought betokens thy young birth 
 Within their souls, blythe Liberty ! That earth 
 Would thus be kindled from the humble spark 
 Ye caught from him of Mentz, and scattered forth, — 
 Faust, — Roster, — Caxton ! — not ‘the clerk/ 
 
 Himself, could prophecy in your own mid-age dark! 
 
 XVII. 
 
 And yet, O Liberty ! these humble toilers 
 
 The true foundation for thy reign begun. [spiers 
 
 Ay, and while throne-craft decks Man’s muruerous 
 
 While feverous Power mocks the weary sun 
 
 With steed-throned effigies of Wellington, 
 
 And columned piles to Nelson, — Labour’s child 
 Turns from their haughty forms, to muse upon 
 The page by their blood- chronicle defiled ; 
 
 Then, bending o’er his toil, weighs well the record wild. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Ay, they are thinking, at the frame, and loom ; 
 
 At bench, and forge, and in the bowelled mine; 
 
 And when the scanty hour of rest is come, 
 
 Again they read — to think, and to divine 
 How it hath come to pass that Toil must pine 
 While Sloth doth revel; how the game of blood 
 Hath served their tyrants; how the scheme malign 
 Of priests hath crushed them ; and resolve doth bud 
 To band, and to bring back the primal Brotherhood. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 What, though, a while, the braggart-tongued poltroon, 
 False demagogue, or hireling base, impede 
 The union they affect to aid P Right soon 
 Deep thought to such ‘ conspiracy’ shall lead 
 As will result in a successful deed — 
 
 Not forceful, but fraternal : for the Past 
 Hath warned the Million that they must succeed 
 By will— and not by war. Yet, to hold fast 
 Men’s rage when they are starving — ’tis a struggle vast ! 
 
THE PURGATORY 
 
 * 2/0 
 
 xx. 
 
 A struggle that were vain, unless the Book 
 Had kindled light within the Toiler’s soul, 
 
 And taught him though ’tis difficult to brook 
 Contempt with hunger, — yet, he must control 
 Revenge, or it will leave him more a thrall : 
 
 The pike, the brand, the blaze — his lesson saith, 
 Would leave Old England as they have left Gaul — 
 Bondaged to sceptred Cunning. Thus, their wrath 
 The Million quell — but look for Right with firmest fait); 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Oh! might I see that triumph ere I die — 
 
 The poor, oppressed, contemned, and hunger’d throng 
 Hold festival for Labour’s victory 
 O’er Mammon, Pride, and Sloth ; for Right o’er Wr ong 
 Oh ! might I hear them swell the choral song — 
 
 4 The Toilers’ Rights are won ! our Fatherland 
 ‘ Is fully free !’ — with joy to rest among 
 The solemn dead, at Nature’s high command, 
 
 I’d haste : nor ask to stay the speed of one life-sand ? 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Nor selfish is the wish, — however vain ; 
 
 From boyhood, Greece, and our old Commonweal 
 I worshipped; but ’twas gnawing hunger’s pain 
 I saw your lank and fainting forms reveal — 
 
 Poor trampled stockingers ! — that made me feel 
 ’Twas time to be in earnest, nor regard 
 Man’s freedom merely as a theme for zeal 
 In hours of emulous converse, or for bard 
 Weaving rapt fancies in pursuit of Fame’s reward. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 I threw me in the gap — defying scorn, 
 
 Threats, hatred, pois’nous tongues — to front your foen 
 
 And this hath come of it, — that I have worn 
 
 The fetters for your sake. Yet, now the close 
 
 Of this captivity is near, no throes 
 
 Of anger, sorrow', or regret, are mine 
 
 For aught that I have suffered ; but your w T oes — 
 
 Poor victims ! who by grinding tricksters pine, — 
 Breed thoughts that with my hopes their tortures inter twin* 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 271 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 1 would review my course, — that so I may 
 Shun, for the future, aught unwise, unjust, 
 
 Untrue to Freedom, if my rugged way 
 I sometimes trod — like other things of dust — 
 
 In error. Inly can I look, and trust 
 My heart’s clear witness, that I never swerved 
 To wilful wrong. Yet thy demands august, 
 
 Great Truth ! I here obey, with spirit nerved 
 By deep reflection — healthful aid but ill preserved 
 
 xxv. 
 
 To him who mixeth with the whirl and rage 
 Of popular commotion. Here I hold 
 Thy mirror to my sou), and deeply pledge 
 My heart it shall by clamour be controlled 
 No more to thread the mazes manifold 
 Of crookt Expediency, — nor through ill haste 
 To end the Toiler’s woe, to leave the bold 
 And simple path be led : union unchaste 
 With Faction will I shun — taught by the erring Past. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Here then, 0 holiest Liberty ! my heart 
 I lay upon thine altar, — undismayed, 
 
 Unswerving, unsubdued : the afterpart 
 Of life it aims to play with healthier aid 
 Of wisdom, — but no guiltier thoughts upbraid : 
 
 It asks but to be kept from sordid stain 
 As free as now : let consciousness pervade 
 Each pulse through life that still by gold or gain 
 Unbought it beats ; and it shall shun no toil, no pain. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 O welcome, even if its blood be shed 
 For thee, blest Freedom! — only keep it pure! 
 Welcome, the living death more deeply dread 
 Of calumny, by evil shapes obscure 
 That haunt the patriot darkling, and secure 
 From Truth’s Ithuriel spear, their poisons vend : 
 Welcome, that keenest heart-ache — forfeiture 
 Of friendship true : welcome, all pangs that rend 
 The heart — if pure unto the grave it may descend ! 
 
272 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Night’s shadows gather once more in the sxy. 
 Tombing another day of thraldom’s term, 
 
 And leaving few more days to fortify 
 
 The heart so that it meet freedom with firm 
 
 And peaceful throb. What mingled feelings germ 
 
 Within me, — what quick hosts of battling thought ! 
 
 Will, then, the world assume some new-born charm? 
 
 And shall I feel, in it with change deep fraught, 
 
 As if I had been dead, and were to life new brought ? 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Ah ! soon it will appear the same poor vale 
 Of tears; and, soon, my journey through its gloom 
 Or radiance will be o’er. Let me not fail 
 To keep my soul’s resolve; and then unwomb 
 What will, ere I attain my final doom, 
 
 Right blythely will I on ! — yea, meet grim Death 
 Himself, in peace : for what viaticum 
 Need we, if Death be unto Life the path, 
 
 But truthfulness of heart ? — is it not more than faith ? 
 
 XXX. 
 
 And, if the grave indeed hath nought beyond 
 Its cold confine, of thought, or joy, or love; 
 
 If there we bid farewell unto the fond 
 Cleavings o’ th’ heart, for ever, and shall prove 
 No more what rapture ’tis when hearts commove 
 With mutual tenderness 
 
 I will pursue 
 
 That theme no more. This love of life enwove 
 Within me, Death itself may yet subdue; 
 
 But, while I live ’twill burn its being to renew! 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 I dreamt again, — but ’twas a gladsome dream: 
 
 A dream of portents beatifical : 
 
 A dream where the prophetic brain did teem 
 With glorious visions of high festival 
 In sculptured aisle, and dome, and rainbowed halls 
 A festival of Brotherhood and Mind 
 By suicidal spirits held, from thrall 
 Of Evil freed; and mystically designed 
 To’ adumbrate future bliss for Earth and humankind/ 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 273 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 As where the way to some hoar fane of Nile — 
 
 Carnac, or Luxor, or far Ibsamboul — 
 
 Lay through an imaged path, for many a mile, 
 
 Of sphinxes huge or lions, so that lull 
 With abject awe and fitted for the rule 
 Of priests the worshipper approached, — thus seemed 
 The aisle fit path to fill with beautiful 
 Expectancies the ghostly throng that streamed 
 Along its wilderness of sculptures, as I dreamed. 
 
 xxxnr. 
 
 And when the dome we raught, felicity 
 Of hope ripened to rapturous overbliss 
 With what the spiritual sense did hear and see 
 Beneath that span colossal : Music’s voice 
 A sweetness gushed fit to emparadise 
 The plastic forms of wisdom and of worth 
 That there in mystic apotheosis 
 Of statued life reposed : forms of old Earth 
 They were — the best, the noblest children of her birth. 
 
 xxxiv. 
 
 Range above range rose many-fashioned niche, 
 
 A caverned space as wonderful and vast 
 As that weird city which few travellers reach — 
 Idumoean Petra, in the dangerous waste ; [2] 
 
 And in such order were the worthies placed 
 
 That they, though mute, the world’s progressive story 
 
 Of spirit-toil revealed, from first to last ; 
 
 And how the spark, first caught by sages hoary 
 From Nature’s fire, Mind nurtured to a flame of glory. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 From ancient Orient to the late-born West, 
 
 Bard, thinker, devotee of enterprise, 
 
 Philanthropist and patriot, soul of quest 
 For Nature’s secrets, child in whose wrapt eyes 
 She glows so lovely that his spirit plies 
 Its powers to imitate her forms — the gems 
 From Earth’s clay gathered — in immortal guise 
 Seemed there enshrined : beings whose very names 
 Shed splendour more ineffable than diadems. 
 
 18 T 
 
274 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 A spiritual Pantheon of the Good, 
 
 The Free, the Tireless, and the truly Great, 
 
 It was : a mansion of soul-sanctitude 
 
 That held the visitant spirit in a state 
 
 Of ecstasied entrancement — all-elate 
 
 With love and wonder, and yet hushed with awe : 
 
 And Mind seemed sounds symphonious to create 
 That heightened bliss, pondering on what it saw, — 
 
 So that our thoughts germed music, by some unknown law. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 Anon, this minstrelsy so wondrous ceased ; 
 
 And, with a groupe of spirits who stood nigh, 
 
 Gazing as if they would for ever feast 
 On what they saw, yet never satisfy 
 Their yearning souls, — forthwith, methought, that I 
 Became consociate, — hearing how they spoke 
 Their glowing thoughts, by numbers that swept by 
 Still undistract, and still with sateless look 
 Scanning the sculptures as they were a priceless book. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 Of widely-scattered nations were these ghosts, 
 
 And widely-spoken names : — for nought was sealed, 
 
 In this most vivid dream, of all the hosts 
 That Phantasy surveyed. First, was revealed, 
 
 He who in Athens to himself beheld 
 Three hundred statues raised, — Demetrius 
 Phalereus, — whom the City -sieging king expelled, 
 
 And unto vessels for the vilest use ’3] 
 
 The statues turned, — deemingtheir loved shapes dangerous, 
 
 xxxix. 
 
 Exalted forms of ever-glorious Greece 
 Were magnets to his eyes : her Poet-choir 
 Divine, — where Homer, with the love increase 
 Of time had fostered for the peerless sire 
 Of song in the worlds heart, sat crowned, — the fire 
 Of soul, wanting its natural mirror, gleaming 
 Throughout his sightless face : sons of the lyre 
 Around, beneath him, sculptured stood, each seeming 
 With awe to mark the splendour from his bald brow beaming 
 
OF SUICIDES 
 
 275 
 
 XL. 
 
 On these th’ Athenian gazed, and on the throng 
 Of god-like labourers for human weal : 
 
 The lowly Socrates — loftiest among 
 The band fraternal — less by fervid zeal 
 Than by his lowliness seeming t’ excel 
 TIT excelling throng. Neither on patriot shapes 
 With less love did he gaze : names that to tell 
 Make monarclis quake, in spite of Time’s long lapse ; 
 For still some slave, who hears, frorfi their hard yoke escapes. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Fast by Demetrius stood a ghostly form 
 Of later times, and of less peaceful deed : — 
 
 Berthier, — the favourite of that Bird of Storm, 
 
 The ravening Gallic eagle, — whose fierce greed 
 Ceasing to aid, praise for defection bred 
 Remorse so torturous in his soul, he spurned 
 The thought of life, and from its torment fled.[4] 
 
 With throes remorseful he no longer burned, 
 
 But, with the Athenian, o’er those shapes of virtue yearned. 
 
 XLII. 
 
 For though full many a sage philanthropist, 
 
 High orator, and bard of comely France 
 Were statued there, with emblems due de viced 
 Their excellence proclaiming, yet the glance 
 Of the war-wearied Frenchman, whose romance 
 For his gay, glory -stricken land was gone, 
 
 On Hellene forms made sweeter tarriance. — 
 
 Like preference shared the spirit of Wolfe Tone, 
 
 That by him I saw stand, — Hibernia’s patriot son. 
 
 XL1II. 
 
 Yet, in his country’s Grattan, in the face 
 Of brave Fitzgerald, and the generous brow 
 Of fated Emmett, did th’ Hibernian trace 
 Features that stirred the warm fraternal flow 
 Within his essence and dispread the glow 
 Of rapture o’er his visage. Paramount 
 In virtue, still, he deemed that glorious show 
 Of Greeks, and did the patriot deeds recount 
 Of Hellas, — vaunting her true Glory’s primal fount. 
 
 t 2 
 
27 6 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XL I V . 
 
 One stately form there was who on late men 
 Stood in absorbed gaze, — strange thoughts of home, 
 
 And change, and Wrong that made the world a den 
 Of lawless beasts, revolving, till a gloom 
 Curtained his brow. Yet, joy ’gan, soon, relume, 
 
 With radiance visible, his new-born soul. — 
 
 The spirit of imperial Montezume 
 It was : that victim of ambition foul, [5] 
 
 Whose regal heart disdained the Spaniard’s base control. 
 
 XLV. 
 
 Most wistfully he scanned th’ intrepid calm 
 That in the eye of great Columbus dwelt, 
 
 Till sighs broke forth ; and though a healing balm 
 Las Casas’ love -look o’er his essence dealt, 
 
 ’Twas but a pause unto the grief he felt 
 For his lost race ; and he had wailed aloud, 
 
 But that his wild eye ’lighted where he knelt 
 In soul, and owned the majesty that glowed 
 In Washington’s benignly grand similitude. 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Last of the groupe the patriot Shades I saw 
 Of Romilly and Whitbread, — whose rapt gaze 
 America’s great son seemed oft to draw 
 Aside from Alfred — for like glorious rays, 
 
 That did ev’n disembodied vision daze, 
 
 Streamed from the sculptures of the civic chief 
 And diademmed philanthropist : their praise 
 They told, and Avould have mourned the sojourn brief 
 Of such blest forms on earth; but rapture banished 
 
 [grief ! — 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 The glorious toil is o’er, my brother ! — spake 
 The soul of Romilly, — while with th’ intense 
 Joy of beneficence he seemed to quake; — 
 
 The glorious toil is o’er ! — blest prevalence 
 Mercy hath won: the evil effluence 
 Of blood by brethren shed glad Earth shall see 
 No more ! Against the grim armipotence 
 Of Anger, Hate, Revenge, and Cruelty, 
 
 The toil was hard; but from their blight all Life s free ! 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 277 
 
 xLvin. 
 
 Who would have said, but they who felt her power, 
 Before the still small voice of Gentleness 
 The great ones of the Earth shoild one day cower, 
 And kings her true divinity confess; 
 
 The battle-field be green and thunderless ; 
 
 The scaffold and the gibbet disappear ; 
 
 The dungeon vanish ; and, no more, distress 
 Hunger and discontent raise troublous fear 
 Of violence, and knit the ruler’s brow austere ? 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 Yet, this is her triumphant marvel-work ! — 
 
 Said Whitbread’s spirit : — ’twas her genial breath 
 Nourished most healthfully the deathless spark 
 Of Freedom, when the streams of blood which wrath 
 Had shed half-quenched it, and men’s hope and faith 
 In Liberty was changed to dread, and they 
 With tears of hushed despair sighed that the path 
 Of Thraldom must be trod — thinking the sway 
 Of Sceptres better than the howl of wolves of prey. — 
 
 L. 
 
 Brother, thy thoughts are of my fatherland, — 
 
 Said Berthier ; — and if this our new-born joy 
 Did not the phantasms of Earth’s wrong disband 
 Great grief were mine. But this doth still destroy 
 The spectrous visitings which would annoy 
 My spirit — that although the strife for Right 
 Was urged by advocates who did employ 
 Wrong’s weapons in their overzeal, — the might 
 Of Truth, at length, hath made her victress in the fight. 
 
 LI. 
 
 ’Twas long and toilful ; and, in every clime, 
 
 Too oft in error did her champions ease 
 Seek by the sword. The register of Time 
 Is a dark volume ; and what soul that sees 
 His autograph in characters that please 
 His conscience throughly, on the record writ ? 
 
 That ail is well at last, may well appease 
 The self-accusing shapes which still would flit [quit. 
 Through memory, and loathe their long-known haunts to 
 
278 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LIT. 
 
 Our penal throes are ended here : Earth’s sorrow, 
 From war and violence, hate and revenge, 
 
 Is past, ne’er to return ! O let us borrow 
 Help from such thoughts our spirits to estrange 
 Still more and more from woe l — 
 
 This joyous change 
 
 May well absorb our thought, — the Shade began 
 Of noble Montezuma, — yet to range 
 Her youthful haunts the soul can scarce refrain : 
 Bliss hath not changed us into things marmorean. 
 
 LUI. 
 
 Love for dear Mexico and my crushed race, 
 
 Trampled by haughty Cortez and his crew, 
 
 Eternity itself cannot efface 
 Within my essence; nor regret subdue 
 That Fate should thus relentlessly pursue 
 One hapless people, and their glory sweep 
 Into oblivion. While l with ye view 
 These glorious forms, how can I fail to weep 
 That my sires’ deeds of worth are lost in darkness deep 
 
 liv. 
 
 What am I but the shadow of a name P 
 My people’s virtues, glory, arts, unknown : 
 
 Hurled by their conquerors to barbarian shame 
 Though they deserved it not — but might have shone 
 Among the nations, had not Spain’s dark frown 
 Of pride and cruelty spread woe and waste 
 Where’er it fell, blighting the happy zone 
 Our fathers’ sons long held, their daughters graced : 
 Oh no ! I cannot tear from memory all the Past ! 
 
 LV. 
 
 Natheless, my brothers, I with ye rejoice 
 That after Earth’s long ages of dispute, 
 
 Conquest and blood, the gentle, healing voice 
 Of Goodness doth prevail. Murders pollute 
 My ancient clime no more ; and, though the foot 
 Of strangers treads upon our fathers’ dust, 
 
 Since they have learned to live like brothers, mute 
 The Mexican shall be of wrongs that thrust 
 His people from the soil : deeds bloody and unjust. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 279 
 
 LVI. 
 
 No image of my fathers I behold 
 Among these forms of worth, on which to doat 
 With fond affection ; but the heart is cold 
 Whose joys are all from selfishness extraught: 
 
 My heart doth swell with love tow’rds all who wroughj 
 Out liberty and peace and brotherhood, 
 
 For poor Humanity, by toilful thought, 
 
 Through scorn and suffering : as with a flood 
 Of grateful love it swells for all the Great and Good ! — 
 
 LVI i. 
 
 Nobly thou hast discharged thy generous soul, — 
 
 TIT Hibernian spirit said : — Mind cannot lose 
 All impress of the Past, — cannot control 
 Her frequent wish to roam where early vows 
 Were made to Truth and Freedom — shapes that rouse 
 TIT antagonistic phantasies of Fraud 
 And Tyranny. Nor should the soul accuse 
 Herself for ire at wrong : ’twere vile to laud 
 That which is evil : it demands our censure broad. 
 
 LVIII. 
 
 Less were an error ; but to pass beyond 
 An upright indignation were to bring 
 Back on our souls self-torment, and surround 
 Our essences again with suffering. 
 
 The memory of wrong, since, now, the sting 
 Of base revenge is drawn, shall minister 
 To higher bliss — to sweeter revelling 
 In joy; for it shall be the harbinger 
 Unto the heart’s sweet sense — Forgiveness triumphs there ! 
 
 LIX. 
 
 If on the fateful Past thou look’st to grieve, 
 
 How much more might I utter mournful plaint 
 For Erin’s woe P Spirit ! it should relieve 
 Thy soul that sword and torture did attaint 
 The lives of thy sires’ race. Better than faint, 
 
 And pine, and howl, and curse their tyrant lords 
 For ages, end still feel a strange constraint 
 To live and. multiply mean serfish hordes! 
 
 Such woes my memory of her fatherland records. 
 
280 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LX. 
 
 Thy race by death were happily set free 
 From their tormentors : mine remained to gnash 
 Their teeth, in rags and hunger, — yet to see 
 Their conquerors revel; to behold each flash 
 Of freedom fail, and by its failure dash 
 Their hopes to deep despair; to glow and burn 
 Again with patriot ire, — and yet by rash 
 Outbreak to plunge in hopeless horror. Turn 
 And look on thy lost race, spirit, to triumph ; not to mourn ! — 
 
 LX I. 
 
 My brother spirits ! — said th’ Athenian ghost, — 
 
 This theme to me were fruitful of regret, 
 
 If, mid these glories, I could be engrossed 
 With tristful thoughts. Did not the tyrant fret 
 The limbs of Hellas with the chain ? Forget 
 Ye that the mother-land of Freedom wore 
 The gyves of Slavery, for ages ? Let 
 That mournful thought lead ye to mourn no more 
 For aught your brethren suffered in the days of yore. 
 
 LX II. 
 
 Save her few mountain-fastnesses, old earth 
 Has not a spot where men the tyrant-yoke 
 Of brother-men have never borne. Let mirth — 
 
 High, holy, blissful mirth in us be woke 
 That world-wide bondage is for ever broke, 
 
 And free beings fill the universe. Not sadness 
 Should rise while back upon the Past we ’ook ; 
 
 But grateful joy that Man’s career of madness 
 Hath wise fruition — age-long woe doth end in gladn ess. 
 
 LXI1I. 
 
 Still let us drink with ecstasy and wonder, 
 
 As at a living fountain, lessons sweet 
 While on the lofty lineaments we ponder 
 Of all Earth’s Great and Good ; and still repeat 
 This precious thought — that we our brethren greet 
 In these bright shapes. What their meek souls attained 
 Of lofty purpose, patient power to treat 
 Their foes with gentleness ; what height they gained 
 Of mental grandeur ; how by charm of meekness reigned 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 281 
 
 LXIV. 
 
 O’er fiercest natures, and their rage subdued; 
 
 How persevering love won ev’n the foes 
 Who thiisted for their blood to doff their rude 
 And murderous frowns, and smilingly disclose 
 The heart’s regenerate kindness ; how the throes 
 Of pain they conquered, and, triumphing, hurled 
 Thraldom, revenge, hate, envy, all Man’s woes, 
 
 For ever, from the groaning, bleeding world ; 
 
 And over sea and strand the gonfalon unfurled 
 
 LXV. 
 
 Of Truth and Love, Knowledge and Gentleness : 
 
 All their eternal triumphs we may share 
 In this exultant thought — the fair impress 
 Of our humanity they meekly wear 
 And of their glory we are, each, the heir — 
 
 For our own brethren’s heritage to us 
 Belongs. Brothers, be blythe, be debonair 1 
 And let our happiest thoughts the reins give loose 
 While on these brother-forms we gaze, so luminous ! 
 
 LXVI. 
 
 Such hortatives sad broodings to dispel, 
 
 And revel to the full in their new 7 joys, 
 
 Th’ Athenian uttered ; and a blythe farewell, 
 Methought, they, forthwith, bade to all alloys 
 Of happiness ; and yet no overpoise 
 Their spirits felt: their joy was fraught w r ith high 
 And eloquent descant that became the Wise, 
 
 The Noble, and the Good: nor did they vie 
 In speech ; but held discourse shorn of earth’s vanity. — 
 
 LXVII. 
 
 Anon, woke thrilling sounds omnipotent, 
 
 On earth, to null all thoughts but such as sprung 
 Up armed in the brain while forth w r as sent 
 The trumpet’s peal, — but such as sought a tongue, 
 
 Yet found it not, while horn and harp notes clung 
 Unto each other’s sweetness, — or the heart 
 Melted to faintness, with rapt wailings wrung 
 Of hautboy and bassoon. Such prelude, thwart 
 The dome piercing, seemed well-known signal to depart. 
 
282 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXVI1I. 
 
 Soon, blent these brothers were with throngs that now 
 Flocked onward where, beyond the vault’s vast span, 
 
 1 saw revealed a dazzling heaven-dight how, 
 
 Grand beyond likeness, and by wondrous plan 
 
 Unto the hall with roof cerulean 
 
 Serving for gate-way-arch. Thither to speed, 
 
 With uplift gaze, the spiiit-crowd began, — 
 
 While to the prelude movements did succeed 
 Of all superhest sounds the mind devours with greed. 
 
 i.xix. 
 
 Full-pulsed tympanum and deep-toned string 
 Proclaimed dense myriads marching with the step 
 Of stately joy to some vast gathering ; 
 
 While, ever and anon, the trill and sweep 
 Of flutes and viols caused the heart to leap 
 With foretaste of its banquet. Mind hath known, 
 
 IS e’er in its house of clay, rapture so deep 
 From Handel’s giant pomps on organ blown, 
 
 While ’long cathedral aisles some pageant proud was strown. 
 
 LXX. 
 
 Beneath the wondrous arch of heavenly sheen, 
 
 I passed into the hall, when — lo ! no more 
 Monarchal thrones and monster shapes were seen 
 Within; hut, from the middle of its floor 
 Immense, shelved gently upward countless store 
 Of sculptured seats extending to the hound 
 Cf that ellipsis vast ; and wisest lore 
 By plastic art into each seat seemed wound — 
 
 So that the mind read deepest lessons all around. 
 
 LXXI. 
 
 .And, on the rim of the ellipse, where, erst, 
 
 Wild shapes reared irkingly, as if 
 
 To prop the rainbowed roof, in dread ’twould hurst 
 
 Upon their heads, stood images of life, 
 
 Blight as the sun, their countenances rife 
 With blended beauty, intellect, and love : 
 
 Fair plumed wings they had ; hut ’twas a strife 
 For mind to judge what it did best behove [wove. 
 To say they were — such grace seemed in their forms en - 
 
‘ OF SUICIDES. 
 
 283 
 
 LXXI 1. 
 
 And, as the myriad multitude swarmed in, 
 
 Filling the spacious amphitheatre, 
 
 In spirit-whispers some of seraphin 
 And some of genii talked, and guessed these were 
 Such mystic essences. Interpreter 
 None needed long ; the soul ’gan soon perceive 
 They were her own creations, which the stir 
 Of glorious brother-thoughts had power t’ enweave 
 To sensuous shapes — as if they did to sight upheave. ~ 
 
 LXXI II. 
 
 With visages as bright, with looks as blest 
 As kindly and intelligent, all beamed 
 And smiled upon each other, while their rest 
 They took upon the graven seats. None deemed 
 Himself nobler than others : none esteemed 
 His brother meanly : pride and rank and state 
 Had vanished ; and, all equal, as beseemed 
 A brother-throng, together Essence sate, 
 
 In love, of humblest citizen .and potentate. 
 
 LXXIV. 
 
 Aloft, o’er all, the roof with splendour hued 
 Of bows celestial still was self-suspended. 
 
 The regal forms whose blazoned pomp I view r ed 
 In earlier dreams, now sat with sages blended — 
 Uncrowned, unsceptred, all their haught looks ended — • 
 With bards, and workers-out of human weal, 
 
 And patriots who in lofty deed transcended 
 Their earthly fellows. Ghosts of erring zeal 
 For faiths fantastic, creeds incomprehensible, 
 
 LXX V. 
 
 And ciuel idol-worships, whom I saw 
 Climbing the Mount of Vanity ; the wild 
 Lone dweller in the cave, whose rage w ith aw e 
 I witnessed ’mong his snakes ; the Poet-child 
 With his lamenting harp, who W’ept, exiled 
 To forest-solitude ; the tuneful choir 
 Of bards who walked the grove ; the band who toiled, 
 For aye, to kindle the fierce fatal fire 
 Of soul wherewith Fiance lit the devastating pyre 
 
284 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Of Liberty ; a moiety of the ghosts 
 Who idly lay along the beach i’ th’ land 
 Of Sloth and Desolation ; Sorrow’s hosts ; 
 
 And crowds of those fair forms who, hand-in-hand, 
 Sped o’er the pasture-plain, with greetings bland, 
 
 And garlanded with flowers ; all sat arrayed 
 In simple yet attractive guise : a band 
 Of souls whose glorious joy-light had no shade : 
 
 Wrath, pride, guilt, woe, for ever from each essence fled! 
 
 LXXVII. 
 
 Soft consentaneous murmurs soon were heard 
 ’Mid which distinguishable grew the name 
 Of sage Lycurgus, — whereat claricord 
 And viol, clarion, pipe and drum became 
 Mute as expectant listeners ; and the claim 
 Fraternal to receive his speech, with meek 
 Yet manly front he rose to answer. Maim 
 No longer were the powers of voice: the Greek [speak. 
 Did seem, and they that followed, with Earth’s tongues to 
 
 Lxxvnr. 
 
 Brother and sister spirits, to rehearse 
 Our joy, — he said, — what volumed tongue hath skill ? 
 Our happiness, like the eternal source 
 From which it springs, doth ever over-fill 
 And over-run ; so that our bliss we still 
 Augment, commingling bliss. I triumph not 
 To think me a true seer: too deep the thrill 
 Of ecstasy doth move me that all doubt 
 And guess are past, and this beatitude is raught. 
 
 LXXJX. 
 
 Brothers, this blest reality hath swept 
 The films of mystery from the general mind ; 
 
 And he who doubted most now an adept 
 Becomes in tracing Nature’s progress : blind 
 Were many, once: but how it was designed 
 From earliest eld, that pain corporeal, — 
 
 That hate, and torture with it intertwined, 
 
 Should pass away, and brotherhood prevail 
 And joy, — all now perceive with vision spiritual. 
 
OF SUICIDE? 
 
 2b5 
 
 LXXX. 
 
 Ye who, with opulence of speech endowed, 
 
 Excel, begin the never-tiring theme — 
 
 What mighty influences did long enshroud 
 Themselves from vulgar gaze, and yet did seem 
 To Nature’s true disciples with the beam 
 Of splendour’s self revealed, — and sure to drown 
 And overwhelm all error, as a stream 
 Resistless sweeps all human barriers down — 
 
 Or as Light’s genial smile o’ercometh Night’s drear frown* 
 
 LXXXI. 
 
 How we now wonder, while our ken afar 
 Travels from these joy-seats, — surveys the dome 
 Resplendent with full many a- exemplar 
 Of human virtues, — and enrapt doth roam 
 Along the dazzling aisle where graces bloom 
 Ineffable, — how we now wonder Truth 
 So long was hid! Be thine th’ exordium, 
 
 0 Mithridates ! to pourtray the growth 
 Good, and how she vanquished all her foes uncouth !— . 
 
 LXXXII. 
 
 So spake the great Laconian, and his seat 
 Meekly resumed, while gentle murmurings rose 
 From myriads who would fain the sage entreat 
 His descant to prolong : but no applause 
 He sought, and signified he lacked dispose, 
 
 By silent smiles. Disrobed of pomp and pride, 
 
 With truer glory clad than regal shows, 
 
 The spirit of the Pontic king complied 
 With the wise Spartan’s call- — by thousands ratified. — 
 
 LXXXIII. 
 
 Lycurgus, though thy modesty would wave 
 Our full soul’s tribute, — he arose and said, — 
 
 Yet here I laud thy wisdom deep, and suave 
 Forbearance ’mid the scorn that on thy head 
 We in our rashn ess — by old pomps misfed 
 And overblown \ poured, when we should have praised. 
 Wisely thou say’ st the lessons here outspread, 
 
 Through hall nd dome and aisle, have in us raised 
 Wonder that we so long in ignorance on them gazed. 
 
THE PURGATORY 
 
 286 
 
 LXXXIV. 
 
 How glorious is the vision now ’tis filled 
 With meaning to our spirits ! — all unlike 
 The vanities our pomp-slaved thought did build 
 To lull our sense of pain, and that made quick 
 Evanishment when reason shook her sick 
 Lethargic bondage off. The beauteous aisle 
 Designed by graces architectonic 
 To pourtray outward Nature’s varied pile — 
 
 Now knows each spirit-denizen of self-exile : — 
 
 LXXXV. 
 
 Nor this alone, but man’s own outward form 
 And potency. And even as on earth 
 Love for the outer world did widely germ 
 In man, and love for self, — while of no worth 
 Seemed intellectual wealth, but Mind a dearth 
 Of noblest images did long unfold — 
 
 So yon vast dome, designed to shadow forth 
 Man’s inner nature, till of late no mould 
 Of virtue held, though it doth now rich treasure hold. 
 
 LXXXVI. 
 
 For ages did the lesson us invite 
 
 To contemplation : but the soul was held 
 
 In earth’s old bonds of prejudice, nor right 
 
 From wrong discerned. In thraldom thus we dwelled 
 
 Of seif deceit : vile thraldom, though we swelled 
 
 With blindly arrogant imaginings. 
 
 Darkness and vagueness from the soul expelled, — 
 
 Her chambers filled with Virtue’s symbolings, — 
 Reason disdaineth pride and its false glisterings. 
 
 LXXXVI I. 
 
 And now our nature’s stately portraiture 
 We view. The aisle is fitting vestibule 
 Unto the dome stored with memorials pure — 
 
 Like cultured intellect with beautiful 
 Exterior; — and then Reason’s lofty rule, 
 
 Where prejudice was paramount, appears : 
 
 From proud and tyrant phantasies the soul 
 Is freed ; and, since free thought her essence cheers, 
 Free thought in every human spirit she reveres. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 287 
 
 LXXXVITI. 
 
 Sage Si art an, thus I read our visioned state. 
 
 Rehearsal, how our sufferings passed away, 
 
 And how old Earth became regenerate, 
 
 1 yield unto my brethren, though I may, 
 
 For opening of the theme, thus much essay : 
 
 ’Twas conquest over Evil physical 
 That ushered in Earth’s glorious brother-day : — 
 Whence came, by law of sympathy whose veil 
 Is still unrent, our blest soul-state perpetual. 
 
 LXXXIX. 
 
 I judge that Earth had still in bondage been 
 To Error, had the sons of enterprize 
 And science, unobservant, failed to glean 
 The truths Great Nature spread before the eyes 
 Of heedless man, whose passion for life’s toys 
 Robbed him of its true treasures, and so doomed 
 Him all his days with pain to agonize, 
 
 With want and woe : a creature spirit-gloomed, 
 Though tenanting a world where jocund beauty bloomed. 
 
 xc. 
 
 A world whose elements were his wide field 
 For culture. Now, — behold the storm-tossed sea 
 His pathway ! — see his chariots o’er it wheeled 
 More swiftly than o’er land, by energy 
 Electric — which men deemed a mystery, 
 
 Or sign of wrath divine, till from the cloud 
 A sage, wdth children’s kite, and string, and key, 
 
 Drew the winged essence, and the truth foreshowed, 
 Unwittingly, how T , one day, men would tame the proud 
 
 xci. 
 
 All-scathing power, and dandle its huge strength 
 With childlike effort ! Mountain, stream, and mine 
 Their wealth afford him : Earth, through all the length 
 And breadth and depth of her rotund confine, 
 
 Th’ impalpable and vital chrystalline 
 Itself, are, each, his servitor ! Of want 
 Men talk as of some ancient fable : pine 
 Thev cannot, for the soil, exuberant 
 Rend'.ed by art, of food is over-ministrant. 
 
28 S 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 XCU. 
 
 The senses know no craving: neither strife 
 Nor guile to win indulgence, or obtain 
 What all enjoy, embitters human life : 
 
 Disease is banished — until mortal pain 
 Approaches: even the bounds of life’s domain 
 Are trebly larger. Brothers, do I deem 
 Aright that mortal men and spirits gain 
 Their high beatitude, because supreme 
 Men grew o’er natural Evil? But I yield the theme. — 
 
 xcm. 
 
 He ceased, abruptly, feeling modest fear 
 His speech might seem assumptive occupance 
 Of thought where all were equal : to revere 
 The humblest, thus, the highest Puissance 
 Was brought by sense of due allegiance 
 To Nature and Equality. The ghost 
 Of Cato rose, — after short hesitance, — 
 
 For sternest spirits of all haughty boast 
 Seemed stript; and thus he argued ’mid the spir’tual host: 
 
 xciv. 
 
 0 Mithridates, none will raise dispute 
 Against thy judgment; yet I deem the end 
 Thou hadst not raught, — but left for our pursuit 
 Thy argument begun. That earth doth lend 
 Her general wealth to men, and they now bend 
 Our old dread masters — lightning, wind, and flood— 
 Unto their will, — and that these conquests tend 
 To bring our happy state, — were hardihood 
 For any to deny what long for truth hath stood. 
 
 xcv. 
 
 While with the elements, for foes, Man warred, 
 Want, pain, disease, were his sure heritage 
 Afflictive : hostile life bred in him ruthless, hard, 
 Vindictive thoughts: and thus, from age to age, 
 
 Men lived — the fool in mind diseased : the sage 
 In body : helpless, both. Thou sav’st full well, 
 Great Nature’s truths were open ; and the page 
 Had mortals scanned, each pregnant syllable 
 Divining, Evil they had earlier learned to quell. 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 289 
 
 XCVI. 
 
 The fault lay not in Nature, but in Man— 
 
 The slothful pupil in her school, or wild 
 And perverse truant after vice. Her plan 
 Was stern but wise : to train her favourite child 
 To cope with obstacles, lest he, beguiled 
 By over-ease, should an ignoble thrall 
 Become to pleasure. The great mother smiled 
 Even while she seemed to frown : her child in all 
 Her discipline found toil did some worse ill forestall *. 
 
 xcvn. 
 
 Nay more: — that labour brought its unalloyed 
 And precious sweet, while sloth ’mid plenty took 
 All appetite away, or luxury cloyed 
 The sense until the Man beneath its yoke 
 Bowed, and became bestial in thought and look. 
 
 One obstacle o’ercome, the mind was fired 
 To nobler strife. Thus Nature ne’er forsook 
 Her offspring: all her matron cares conspired 
 To raise him: he, perverse, the bestial state desired. 
 
 XCVIII. 
 
 ’Tis, then, unto the Few, the tireless Few 
 Who through all ages and in every clime, 
 
 Pursued the Good, our gratitude is due. 
 
 Thus moral, mental conquest was the prime 
 Of human victories : triumph sublime 
 O’er outward elements sprang from the wreath 
 Of moral victory ; and through all time 
 They shall be held glorious who did bequeath 
 Lessons of moral struggle in their lives or death. — 
 
 XCIX. 
 
 So spake the high-souled Roman Stoic, whom 
 H is Grecian exemplars followed with zeal, 
 
 Zeno, and meek Cleanthes ; and their doom 
 That, first, Man’s conquest o’er himself the w T eal 
 Prepared of future men, and did reveal 
 To him his latent power to nullify 
 Earth’s outward ills, — strengthened, with kindred zeal, 
 Clitomachus, — for here had ceased to vie 
 The sect of Plato with the Porch, for mastery. [6J 
 19 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 C. 
 
 Like judgment rose and uttered, Metrocles, 
 
 Who honoured age and royal favour fled 
 To shun men’s jealousy. But now to seize 
 The argument, though not by passion led 
 Or unfraternal thought, Lucretius sped ; 
 
 And while he left ungainsayed what in praise 
 Of human conquests these, through zeal, had said, 
 In calm reflective strain and gentle phrase 
 He shewed the victors oft had won no truthful bays. — 
 
 ci. 
 
 Spirits, ye well have shown that to the ken 
 Of universal man wide open lay 
 The book of Nature, — said the hard : the men 
 Ye also wisely laud who o’er their clay 
 Superior rose, and, for their kind, the way 
 Opened to nobler life and high command 
 O’er outward ill: but know ye not that they 
 Were fitted for their work by Nature’s hand, 
 
 From embryons in the primal purposes she planned ? 
 
 CII. 
 
 That Nature’s volume lay unspelled so long — 
 Attribute to her wisdom which doth shun 
 Bash haste: she forms her favourites lithe, but strong 
 To bear and to endure, as well as run 
 Their race and slack not till the gaol is won. 
 
 Neither forget how many sought to find 
 
 Out Nature’s ways, but failed. Sought they the boon, 
 
 Then, vainly, through sheer impotence of mind, 
 
 Or was successful quest for later men designed? 
 
 cm. 
 
 Brothers, have noblest intellects, late-horn, 
 
 In grasp excelled the mighty Stagyrite? 
 
 Did any cast o’er Nature’s face extern 
 Larger discourse, or with more piercing sight 
 Scan her deep secrets, or pour fuller light 
 Intense of Reason on her footsteps broad 
 That men might not her bounteous purpose slight? 
 Who, — while late Western sages they applaud, 
 
 The earlier toiler of his guerdon will defraud? 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 291 
 
 CIV. 
 
 Yet, often, where he thought he knew — ’twas guess. 
 And what he w T ould have known, ev’n at the cost 
 Of life itself, his eagle-sightedness 
 Of soul failed to perceive. Then, ’twas the boast 
 Of some mere modern dwarf to show where lost 
 His search — the ancient giant ; though the vaunt 
 Belonged not him who said, he found: a host 
 Of names have won from men extravagant 
 Applause, while of their worth Truth was uneognisant. 
 
 cv. 
 
 Not their more skilful thought plombed the great deep 
 Of Nature’s mystery, which others failed 
 To fathom : ’twas Herself away did sweep 
 Th’ incumbent waves of darkness, and unsealed 
 Truth’s gems, — for then the channels were revealed 
 Where they had lain for ages. Accident, — 
 Contingency, — some called it, — when to yield 
 Her fruit mature Nature prepared: content 
 With any name to hide their gross-souled wonderment! 
 
 cvi. 
 
 Some said the w^ondrous optic tube had been 
 For ever undiscovered, — vast expanse 
 Of space with all her suns and systems, seen 
 By its weird aid, — and all their utterance 
 Of dateless Nature’s old continuance 
 And might and grandeur been for ever hid, — 
 
 If the mechanic had not marked, by chance, 
 
 His children’s wonder, while, at play, they slid 
 Together and peeped through the chrystals pellucid. [7] 
 
 CVII. 
 
 Others the thread-bare story oft rehearsed — 
 
 Whenas the godlike sage of Albion’s isle 
 Beheld the apple fall, at once dispersed 
 Were Nature’s mists, and, without further toil 
 Of mind, he rose, and with complacent smile, 
 
 Serious but glad, proclaimed the force sublime 
 That binds Earth’s surface to her centre while 
 She wheels around the sun, pervades his clime. 
 
 And keeps all planets in their bounds from birth of Time, 
 
292 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CVIU. 
 
 ’Twas accident, they said, — that from the bough 
 The apple fell, the sage in musing vein 
 Beheld it, and, like other truths that flow 
 By chance into men’s minds, within the brain 
 Of Newton this upsprung, — else, it had lain, 
 
 Belike, still unperceived, still unproclaimed. — 
 
 Thus some the noblest toils of thought were fain 
 To reck for nought, — enthroning Chance; while manned 
 Inferior wits with awe by other tongues were named. 
 
 cix. 
 
 Few were thy words, Lycurgus, but profound 
 In truth : from earliest eld all was designed 
 Or ordered that hath been : Nature’s great round 
 Must needs be travelled: Circumstance and Mind, 
 Alike, must be brought forth, and be combined, 
 
 Ere mightiest Truths evolved : Necessity 
 O’er all prevailed : the flame, the flood, the wind, 
 
 Were masters till the march of Thought set free 
 The world of struggling men from that old tyranny : 
 
 cx. 
 
 The march of Thought was onward from of old, — 
 Onward, for aye, to Nature’s eye, — though dense 
 Film-sighted men no progress could behold : 
 
 Thought sprung from thought by chain of consequence, 
 In old or newer clime, till violence, 
 
 Fraud, ignorance, want, woe, and pain, and thrall 
 Evanished at the new omnipotence 
 Of Mind Nature brought forth: Mind that thro’ all 
 The universe now reigns by might perpetual. — 
 
 CXI. 
 
 Lucretius ceased; and sounds applausive rose 
 From myriads, though in gentlest mode exprest. — 
 
 And, next, high reas’nings on effect and cause, 
 
 And strong necessity, suavely addrest 
 The soul of Atticus unto the blest 
 Assemblage of untroubled minds — who heard 
 Discourse on mysteries deep without unrest 
 In their new state, since mysteries ensnared 
 To doubt no more : doubt, fear, with pain had disappeared.— 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 293 
 
 CXII. 
 
 Thereafter rose the Gracchus, and with mild 
 Yet firm aspect, what seemed forgot, thus urged: — 
 Brothers, with metaphysic thought beguiled. 
 
 And descant on discovery that enlarged 
 Man’s rule o’er outward things, — not undischarged 
 Leave we commemoration due of their 
 Desert whose tireless energies converged 
 To throne the thought of Brotherhood where’er 
 They went: — but for their zeal our lot were still despair : 
 
 CXIII. 
 
 But for their holy strife, — smit with the type, 
 
 Great Spartan, thou in mortal life didst frame, — 
 
 Earth had been yet for franchisement unripe ; 
 
 And thence unblest. Brothers, to mar no claim 
 Of Wisdom’s children to their during fame 
 I seek : honour, all honour to each shade 
 Of Enterprize, — to every hallowed name 
 Of Genius, — and to all who first displayed 
 To man the power o’er ill that for his seizure stayed ! — 
 
 cxiv. 
 
 But who can fail remember that this power 
 Was long usurped by Selfishness ? — that Wonder 
 Herself was mazed through every passing hour 
 At man’s achievements, — as he bound the thunder, 
 Smoothed the storm-wave, clave the live rock asunder 
 Or rendered distance but a name ; yet Love 
 Wept to behold Earth’s sable children under 
 The chain, while their fair-visaged brother drove 
 Them onward with the lash ! Let Time the stain disprove ? 
 
 cxv. 
 
 The foul aspersive stain on Freedom cast 
 By those whose boast of freedom was most loud ! 
 Bethink ye also that if men now fast 
 And pine no more, it is because the Proud 
 Have ceased to be: Earth ever was endowed 
 With tenfold more of plenty than her sum 
 Of life required for food: the hills were browed 
 With luscious vines that smiled as round they clomb 
 The olives, or festooned them with their purple bloom ; 
 
294 
 
 THE PURGATORY 
 
 CXVI. 
 
 The vallies spread their waving treasures forth ; 
 
 But, when the vintage came and harvest-tide, 
 
 Although the toiler gave his heart to mirth — 
 
 To Nature’s impulse true — the wealth for Pride 
 Was garnered up, and Toil was pittanced. Wide 
 O’er ocean islets fair were scattered, filled 
 With overwealth of fruits, but desert-void 
 Of human life : the dainty fig there spilled 
 Her seeds; the golden orange her perfume distilled 
 
 CXVII. 
 
 Upon the vacant air; the grateful palm 
 And wholesome guava and banana stored 
 In vain the sea-girt garden ; sweetest balm 
 Of gums or delicatest juice of mangoes poured 
 Their riches on the tasteless earth; down showered 
 Their flavoured kernels shelly fruits in vain, 
 
 Unless for brutes. Men, — starving men, — looked tow’rd 
 The sea, and sighed for ships to pass the main 
 And end their famine; but they could no help obtain! 
 
 CXVIII. 
 
 Avarice still held them where their numbers served 
 To render them dog-cheap as things of hire 
 For labour: Avarice, that never swerved 
 From sordid grasping, though it might acquire 
 Unreckoned wealth. Vapour, electric fire, 
 
 All mineral virtues, air, and flame, and flood, 
 
 Science subdued ; but Pride did still conspire 
 With Avarice the lean toilers to exclude 
 From all that Science willed to spread for general good. 
 
 CXIX. 
 
 O Mithri dates, thou didst this forget, 
 
 Or leave untold. Doth not thy soul perceive 
 It was when signs of Brotherhood were met 
 With open heart by Pride, and Power to leave 
 Its lawlessness the toiler to retrieve 
 From suffering, yielded, — that the glorious dawn 
 Of Bliss appeared, and moral light did cleave 
 Earth’s age-woofed darkness? But I joy ’tis gone — 
 The reign of Wrong; and toiling men no more shall 
 
 [groan. — 
 
OF SUICIDES. 
 
 cxx. 
 
 Th’ Agrarian ceased, at once : such gentle dread 
 The blest assemblage swayed to raise a thought 
 Averse in brethren. With mild zeal to tread 
 The same thought-track Curtius arose : Thence cau 
 The theme Charondas, and, then, Codrus brought 
 His aid: and, then, Tliemistocles : but suave 
 Their accents were, with tempered reason fraught, — • 
 Although they told how patriot deeds raised brave 
 Resolve in toiling men — till Slavery found its grave. — 
 
 CXXI. 
 
 Next, rose Athenae’s soul-compelling tongue, 
 
 And joined his sentence for the patriot’s praise; 
 
 Yet told, therewith, that poets had not sung 
 In vain, — nor sculptor vainly fixed the gaze 
 Of nations, — architect with deep amaze 
 Entranced them vainly, — nor had Music’s joy 
 Earth visited and failed the mind to raise 
 And heart to bless ; but Nature did employ 
 Innumerous powers the thrall of Evil to destroy. — 
 
 CXXII. 
 
 And, next Demosthenes, Condorcet’s soul 
 Uttered its fervour : — ’tw^s when Man disdained, — 
 He said, to kneel beneath the priest’s control, 
 
 An altar-serf, that human freedom gained 
 Its first true vantage-ground, and Evil waned 
 In all its monstrous forms and torturous might ; 
 
 And only when free-thought all men maintained 
 To be their indefeasible birth-right, — 
 
 It was, — that Error multiform was put to flight, — 
 
 CXXI JI. 
 
 Then Romilly renewed his eulogy 
 Of Gentleness j and spirits thrilled to hear 
 His laud of Mercy, till with jubilee 
 Of love they rose, — monarch, and bard, and seer, 
 Fanatic wild, and misanthrope austere, 
 
 That were on earth, — now all in equal state 
 Of happy brotherhood, — and, thus, with clear 
 Euphonic chaunt, I heard them celebrate, 
 
 In concord blest, Earth’s, Hades’ gladness consummate 
 
296 
 
 THE PURGATORY OF SUICIDES. 
 
 CXXIV. 
 
 ‘ AH hail the glorious power of Gentleness, 
 
 ‘ Of Pity’ and Mercy, Goodness, Love, and Truth ! 
 
 1 Knowledge all hail, and Reason fetterless, — 
 
 * Philanthropy, that yearned with god-like ruth 
 
 ‘ O’er suffering, — Patriotism, whose eloquent mouth, 
 
 ‘ Bold heart, and sinewed hand dissolved the thrall 
 ‘Of Tyrants ! — Genius, Song, and Wisdom sooth, 
 
 ‘ All hail.! — Great sources of old Evil’s fall — - 
 ‘ Men, spirits, hymn your power, in jocund festival ! 
 
 cxxv. 
 
 ‘ Earth’s children raise their universal song 
 ‘ Of love and joy : mountain, and strand, and sea 
 ‘ Are vocal with your praise ! Spirits prolong 
 ‘ The strain : through endless life they anthem ye — 
 
 ‘ Their endless afterlife of jubilee : 
 
 ‘ And hymning ye our essences enhance 
 ‘ Still more the bliss-guage of their destiny, — 
 
 ‘ Assured more deeply of their heritance, 
 
 ‘ The more their joyous thought hath joyous utterance ! 
 
 cxxvi. 
 
 * Spirits, still more rejoice ! — for pain and woe 
 ‘ Are gone, and universal life doth bloom 
 
 ‘ With joy !’ — 
 
 The dream o’erwrought me to a throe 
 Of bliss ; and I awoke to find my home 
 A dungeon, — thence, to ponder when would come 
 The day that Goodness shall the earth renew, 
 
 •And Truth’s young light disperse old Error’s gloom, — 
 When Love shall Hate, and Meekness Pride subdue, — 
 And when the Many cease their slavery to the Few 
 
NOTES TO BOOK THE TENTH. 
 
 [1] Stanza 5. — Anaxarchus, the follower of Democrii 
 who, when the tyrant of Cyprus threatened to cut out his 
 tongue, bit it off, and spit it at the despot. — See Diogenes Laer- 
 tius, or Stanley’s or Enti eld’s Hist, of Philosophy. Galgacus 
 and Wallace are, of course, alluded to in the following lines 
 of the stanza. 
 
 [2] Stanza 34. — For a description of Petra, — the city in 
 the rock, the capital of Idumea, or the kingdom of Edom, 
 — see the travels of Stephens the American. The description 
 of this mysterious relic of the Past, can never be forgotten 
 when once read. 
 
 [3] Stanza 38. — The suicide of Demetrius Phalereus (driven 
 from Athens by Demetrius II oXiopKrjTrig, (or the City-sieger) 
 is related by Diogenes Laertius and others. 
 
 [4] Stanza 41. — Marshal Berthier’s suicide occurred under 
 the following circumstances : — One of the German sovereigns, 
 at whose court he was, if I recollect aright, was blaming the 
 defection of Ney and others from the cause of the Bourbons, 
 at Napoleon’s return from Elba, and took occasion to compli- 
 ment .Berthier on his firmness in resisting a temptation 
 natural to one who had been the bosom friend of Buonaparte. 
 Berthier took the compliment so self-reproachfully to heart, 
 that he withdrew to his chamber, threw himself from a win- 
 dow, and was taken up dead. 
 
 [5] Stanza 44. — “ The unhappy monarch now perceived 
 how low he was sunk, and the haughty spirit, which seemed 
 to have been so long extinct, returning, he scorned to survive 
 
298 
 
 NOTES TO BOOK THE TENTH. 
 
 this last humiliation, and to protract an ignominious life, not 
 only as the prisoner and tool of his enemies, but as the object 
 of contempt or detestation among his subjects. In a trans- 
 port of rage he tore the bandages from his wounds and re- 
 fused, with such obstinacy, to take any nourishment, that he 
 soon ended his wretched days, rejecting, with disdain, all the ' 
 solicitations of the Spaniards to embrace the Christian faith .” 
 — Robertson’s Hist, of America — book 5. 
 
 [6] Stanza 99. — Clitomachus, a Carthaginian, and pupil of 
 Carneades, founder of the Third Academy, and Metrocles 
 (mentioned in the following stanza,) the pupil of Theophrastus, 
 are recorded as ancient suicides. Metrocles, according to 
 Diogenes Laertius, suffocated himself to escape from the in- 
 firmities of age. 
 
 [7] Stanza 106. — The story of Janssen, the Dutch spectacle- 
 maker, and his construction of a telescope from a thought 
 originated by the exclamations of his children, who were 
 playing with two lenses, and beheld how they magnified 
 objects, was familiar to my boyhood ; and although modern 
 historians of science reject the account as a fable, it seemed 
 to me not an improper incident to employ in a work of 
 imagination. 
 
 THE END. 
 

 
iTiHm S,TY OF ill,nois -urbana 
 
 3 0112 077848569