# Queen Mab/Canto VI

VI.
All touch, all eye, all ear, The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. O'er the thin texture of its frame, The varying periods painted changing glows, As on a summer even, When soul-enfolding music floats around, The stainless mirror of the lake Re-images the eastern gloom, Mingling convulsively its purple hues With sunset's burnished gold.
Then thus the Spirit spoke: It is a wild and miserable world! Thorny, and full of care, Which every fiend can make his prey at will. O Fairy! in the lapse of years, Is there no hope in store? Will yon vast suns roll on Interminably, still illuming The night of so many wretched souls, And see no hope for them? Will not the universal Spirit e'er Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?
The Fairy calmly smiled In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope Suffused the Spirits lineaments. Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts, Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth, Falsehood, mistake, and lust; But the eternal world Contains at once the evil and the cure. Some eminent in virtue shall start up, Even in perversest time: The truths of their pure lips, that never die, Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath Of ever-living flame, Until the monster sting itself to death. How sweet a scene will earth become! Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place, Symphonious with the planetary spheres, When man, with changeless nature coalescing, Will undertake regeneration's work, When its ungenial poles no longer point To the red and baleful sun That faintly twinkles there.
Spirit! on yonder earth, Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth! Madness and misery are there! The happiest is most wretched! yet confide, Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy,
Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. Now, to the scene I shew, in silence turn, And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, Which nature soon, with recreating hand, Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, How calm and sweet the victories of life, How terrorless the triumph of the grave! How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown! How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar! The weight of his exterminating curse, How light! and his affected charity, To suit the pressure of the changing times, What palpable deceit!—but for thy aid, Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves!
Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!—the stars, Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, Were gods to the distempered playfulness Of thy untutored infancy: the trees, The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy, More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, The genii of the elements, the powers That give a shape to nature's varied works, Had life and place in the corrupt belief Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain; Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride: Their everlasting and unchanging laws Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up The elements of all that thou didst know; The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, The eternal orbs that beautify the night, The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon, Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, And all their causes, to an abstract point, Converging, thou didst bend, and called it—God! The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, The merciful, and the avenging God! Who, prototype of human misrule, sits High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work, Hell gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves Of fate, whom he created, in his sport, To triumph in their torments when they fell! Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke Of his revenge ascended up to heaven, Blotting the constellations; and the cries
Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land; Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear, And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel Felt cold in her torn entrails!
Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime: But age crept on: one God would not suffice For senile puerility; thou framedst A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford A plea for sating the unnatural thirst For murder, rapine, violence, and crime, That still consumed thy being, even when Thou heardest the step of fate;—that flames might ligh Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks Of parents dying on the pile that burned To light their children to thy paths, the roar Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, Might sate thine hungry ear Even on the bed of death!
But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave, Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night That long has lowered above the ruined world.
Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused A spirit of activity and life, That knows no terra, cessation, or decay; That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe In the dim newness of its being feels The impulses of sublunary things, And all is wonder to unpractised sense: But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease; And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes Its undecaying battlement, presides, Apportioning with irresistible law The place each spring of its machine shall fill; So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords, Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, All seems unlinked contingency and chance: No atom of this turbulence fulfils A vague and unnecessitated task,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act. Even the minutest molecule of light, That in an April sun-beam's fleeting glow Fulfills its destined, though invisible work, The universal Spirit guides; nor less, When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work—glory, does it rule All passions: not a thought, a will, an act, No working of the tyrant's moody mind, Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, Nor the events enchaining every will, That from the depths of unrecorded time Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee, Soul of the Universe! eternal spring Of life and death, of happiness and woe. Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene That floats before our eyes in wavering light, Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, Whose chains and massy walls We feel, but cannot see.
Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power, Necessity! thou mother of the world! Unlike the God of human error, thou Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony: the slave, Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world, And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, His being, in the sight of happiness, That springs from his own works; the poison-tree, Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords A temple where the vows of happy love Are registered, are equal in thy sight: No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge And favoritism, and worst desire of fame Thou knowest not: all that the wide world contains Are but thy passive instruments, and thou Regardst them all with an impartial eye, Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, Because thou hast not human sense, Because thou art not human mind.
Yes! when the sweeping storm of time Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes And broken altars of the almighty fiend, Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood Through centuries clotted there, has floated down The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee, Which, nor the tempest-breath of time, Nor the interminable flood, Over earth's slight pageant rolling, Availeth to destroy,— The sensitive extension of the world.
That wonderous and eternal fane, Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, To do the will of strong necessity, And life, in multitudinous shapes, Still pressing forward where no term can be, Like hungry and unresisting flame Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.