Classic Poem

Thou first cause, whence all things
Their being inherit,
Who art Reason and Sense,
Who art Matter and Spirit:

While a sparkle and perfume
In wine-cups arise,
Like the soul of a man
Flashing forth from his eyes.

While earth smiles below
And the sun shines above,
While soft voices murmur
The first words of love.

While hills hymn the secret
Glad nuptials of earth,
While the rich plain is throbbing
In pangs of new birth,

For thee my bold fancy
From bonds is released,
I invoke thee, O Satan,
Our lord of the feast.

Priest, chanting and sprinkling
No succour shall find thee,
For never shall Satan
Get him behind thee.

See, red rust doth darken
The mystical blade
Of the Archangel Michael;
Unwinged and dismayed

He is hurled in the void
Heaven's battlements over.
The thunder lies frozen
In the hand of Jehovah.

Like meteors and planets
Whose light is all spent,
The angels rain down
From the domed firmament.

In all Matter existent
For ever awake,
King of all that eye sees,
King of all that hands make,

Alone lives great Satan.
He holds his Empire
In the dark eye, where flickers
A tremulous fire,

Which now smoulders low,
And all wooers resists,
Now tearfully flashes,
Entices, insists.

With gladness he gleams
In the juice of the grape,
Holds fast fickle joy
When it longs to escape,

He e'en restores life
On the eve to depart,
Puts sorrow at bay,
And sows love in the heart.

Thou makest, O Satan,
My verse thine abode
An thou burst from my bosom
To challenge the God,

Whom base Popes adore
And Kings cruel as they,
If like thunder thou smitest
Their souls with dismay.

For thee Agramainio,
Astartë, Adon
Lived in poem and picture
And breathed from the stone.

When Ionian zephyrs
Blew soft o'er the sea
'Neath the blessing of Venus
Anadyomene.

For thee on Mount Lebanon's
High cedar grove
Fair Cypris established
Tribunals of love:

For thee was the frenzy
Of dance and of choir,
For thee were chaste virgins
Enflamed with love's fire,

Where the palm-woods of Edom
Make fragrant the breeze,
Where Cyprus gleams white
In the foam of her seas.

What avails him the wrath
Of the fierce Nazarene,
Tho' with barbarous rites
Of his love-feast obscene,

With the torch of the priest,
He demolished thy shrine
And cast on the earth
All that Greece held divine?

Tho' exiled, of helpers
Thou feltest no dearth,
For the people enthroned thee
As God of the hearth.

Then the breast of a woman
Thou mad'st thine abode;
It throbbed with thy presence,
Her lover and God;

The sorceress pallid
With unending woe
Thou bad'st to the succour
Of weak nature go.

By thee was the alchemist's
Dull eye unsealed,
Through thee the magician
At length saw revealed

Beyond the dim cloister's
Enclosure a new
World of beauty, undreamed of,
Bright heavens of blue.

To escape thee, whose power
Thro' all things is spread,
The hermit forlorn
To the Thebaid fled.

O soul, that forsak'st all
Thou lovest most well,
Of the mercies of Satan
Let Heloise tell.

Self-starvèd, in sackcloth
Thou groanest in vain:
'Mid the dirge of the Psalmist
He mingles the strain

Of the Virgil and Horace
Thou sought'st to forget:
'Mid the black nuns beside thee
Strange forms doth he set,

Greek women; than rose-coloured
Morning e'en fairer,
He bringeth Lycoris,
He bringeth Glicera.

In the cell, too, thy sleepless
Eyes often behold
More phantoms he sends thee
From brave days of old.

From the pages of Livy
He wakes to new life
Bold tribunes and consuls,
The forum's fierce strife.

And his spirit impels thee,
O Monk, with strange pride
In thy country, to mount up
The Capitol's side.

And ye whom the fierce flames
Knew not to consume,
Huss and Wicliffe, your voices,
With accent of doom,

Are borne down the breeze
As ye watch night and day:
‘A new age is dawning,
The old fades away.’

Now mitre and crown dread
The hot thunderbolt:
From the cloister there mutters
The sound of Revolt:

With voice as of tempest
No yoke may confine
Cries Savonarola,
Our great Florentine.

And Luther his cassock
Casts off in disdain;
O Man, let thy mind too
Cast off its old chain!

Shine now in bright spendour
With flame girded on!
Blaze, World, in white glory!
Great Satan hath won.

A monster, a terror
On earth is set free,
It runs o'er the forest,
It runs o'er the sea.

Volcano-like towering
With smoke and with fire,
More vast than the plains,
Than the high mountains higher;

It soars o'er abysses
And downward doth sweep
To hide in black caverns
And plunge in the deep.

It bursts forth unfettered:
From shore unto shore
With noise as of whirlwind
In tyrannous roar.

With breath as of whirlwind
Is thundered the cry:
‘Ye peoples, great Satan
In might passeth by,

‘In benison passeth
From land unto land
On his chariot of fire
No man may withstand.’

All hail then, O Satan,
Revolt too! All hail!
And Reason predestined
O'er all to prevail.

Lo, here on thine altar
Our offerings are spread!
The priest thou hast conquered,
Jehovah is dead.