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ASCENSION DAY 159
Tending to final bliss—to stir heaven suffers
Some life to better life, this pain swing fore.
Is needful: that I grant again. proaches of
Did they at last in glory live, bard.
Satan and Judas ® might forgive
The middle time of misery,
Forgive the wrong creation first
Or evolution’s iron key
Did them—provided they are passed
Beyond all change and pain at last
Out of this universe accurst.
But otherwise! I lift my voice,
Deliberately take my choice
Promethean, eager to rejoice,
In the grim protest’s joy to revel
Betwixt Iscariot and the Devil,
Throned in their midst! No pain to feel,
Tossed on some burning bed of steel,
But theirs: My soul of love should swell
And, on those piteous floors they trod,
Feel, and make God feel, out of Hell,
Across the gulf impassable,
That He was damned and I was God!
Ay! Let him rise and answer me. Ethical and
That false creative Deity, eloquent de-
Whence came his right to rack the Earth Christian Cos-
With pangs of death,” disease, and birth : mogony.
No joy unmarred by pain and grief:
Insult on injury heaped high
In that quack-doctor infamy
The Panacea of—Belief !
Only the selfish soul of man
Could ever have conceived a plan
Man only of all life to embrace,
One planet of all stars to place
Alone before the Father’s face ;
Forgetful of creation’s stain,
Forgetful of creation’s pain,
Not dumb !—forgetful of the pangs
Whereby each life laments and hangs,
(Now as I speak a lizard TM lies
In wait for light-bewildered flies)