Large glooms were gathered in the mighty fane, With tinted moongleams slanting here and there;And all was hush: no swelling organ-strain, No chant, no voice or murmuring of prayer;No priests came forth, no tinkling censers fumed, 5And the high altar space was unillumed.
Around the pillars and against the walls Leaned men and shadows; others seemed to brood Bent or recumbent in secluded stalls.
Perchance they were not a great multitude 10Save in that city of so lonely streets Where one may count up every face he meets.
All patiently awaited the event Without a stir or sound, as if no less Self-occupied, doomstricken while attent.15And then we heard a voice of solemn stress From the dark pulpit, and our gaze there met Two eyes which burned as never eyes burned yet:
Two steadfast and intolerable eyes Burning beneath a broad and rugged brow; 20The head behind it of enormous size.
And as black fir-groves in a large wind bow, Our rooted congregation, gloom-arrayed, By that great sad voice deep and full were swayed:--O melancholy Brothers, dark, dark, dark!25O battling in black floods without an ark!
O spectral wanderers of unholy Night!
My soul hath bled for you these sunless years, With bitter blood-drops running down like tears:
Oh dark, dark, dark, withdrawn from joy and light!30My heart is sick with anguish for your bale;Your woe hath been my anguish; yea, I quail And perish in your perishing unblest.
And I have searched the highths and depths, the scope Of all our universe, with desperate hope35To find some solace for your wild unrest.
And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing;Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:
There is no God; no Fiend with names divine 40Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall.
It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme, Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; 45Whom we must curse because the life he gave Could not be buried in the quiet grave, Could not be killed by poison or the knife.
This little life is all we must endure, The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, 50We fall asleep and never wake again;
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.
We finish thus; and all our wretched race 55Shall finish with its cycle, and give place To other beings with their own time-doom:
Infinite aeons ere our kind began;
Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.60We bow down to the universal laws, Which never had for man a special clause Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate:
If toads and vultures are obscene to sight, If tigers burn with beauty and with might, 65Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate?
All substance lives and struggles evermore Through countless shapes continually at war, By countless interactions interknit:
If one is born a certain day on earth, 70All times and forces tended to that birth, Not all the world could change or hinder it.
I find no hint throughout the Universe Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse;I find alone Necessity Supreme; 75With infinite Mystery, abysmal, dark, Unlighted ever by the faintest spark For us the flitting shadows of a dream.
O Brothers of sad lives! they are so brief;A few short years must bring us all relief: 80Can we not bear these years of laboring breath?
But if you would not this poor life fulfil, Lo, you are free to end it when you will, Without the fear of waking after death.--The organ-like vibrations of his voice 85Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away;The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice Was sad and tender as a requiem lay:
Our shadowy congregation rested still As brooding on that "End it when you will." 90
