# Queen Mab/Canto V

V.
Thus do the generations of the earth Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,
Surviving still the imperishable change
That renovates the world; even as the leaves
Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year
Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped
For many seasons there, though long they choke,
Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,
All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees
From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,
Lie level with the earth to moulder there,
They fertilize the land they long deformed,
Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs
Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,
Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.
Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
And judgment cease to wage unnatural war
With passion's unsubduable array.
Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!
Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
Shunning the light, and owning not its name,
Compelled, by its deformity, to screen
With flimsy veil of justice and of right,
Its unattractive lineaments, that scare
All, save the brood of ignorance: at once
The cause and the effect of tyranny;
Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile;
Dead to all love but of its abjectness,
With heart impassive by more noble powers
Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;
Despising its own miserable being,
Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.
Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange
Of all that human art or nature yield;
Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,
And natural kindness hasten to supply
From the full fountain of its boundless love,
For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.
Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade
No solitary virtue dares to spring,
But poverty and wealth with equal band
Scatter their withering curses, and unfold
The doors of premature and violent death,
To pining famine and full-fed disease,
To all that shares the lot of human life,
Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain,
That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.
Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue.
Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, Success has sanctioned to a credulous world The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes The despot numbers; from his cabinet These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, Beneath a vulgar master, to perform A task of cold and brutal drudgery;— Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, Scarce living pullies of a dead machine, Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!   The harmony and happiness of man Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts
His nature to the heaven of its pride, Is bartered for the poison of his soul; The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, Withering all passion but of slavish fear, Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprize and daring, even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys,— Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, The groveling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy.
And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives Aftert he ruin of their hearts, can gild The bitter poison of a nation's woe, Can turn the worship of the servile mob To their corrupt and glaring idol fame, From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, Although its dazzling pedestal be raised Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, With desolated dwellings smoking round. The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, To deeds of charitable intercourse And bare fulfilment of the common laws Of decency and prejudice, confines The struggling nature of his human heart, Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door The frightful waves are driven,—when his son Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, Whose life is misery, and fear, and care; Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; Who ever hears his famished offsprings scream, Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene Of thousands like himself;—he little heeds The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn The vain and bitter mockery of words, Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, And unrestrained, but by the arm of power, That knows and dreads his enmity.
The iron rod of penury still compels Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, And poison, with unprofitable toil, A life too void of solace to confirm The very chains that bind him to his doom. Nature, impartial in munificence, Has gifted man with all-subduing will. Matter, with all its transitory shapes, Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. How many a rustic Milton has past by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care!
How many a vulgar Cato has compelled His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail! How many a Newton, to whose passive ken Those mighty spheres that gem infinity Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven To light the midnights of his native town!
Yet every heart contains perfection's germ: The wisest of the sages of the earth, That ever from the stores of reason drew Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued With pure desire and universal love, Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, Untainted passion, elevated will, Which death (who even would linger long in awe Within his noble presence, and beneath His changeless eyebeam,) might alone subdue. Him, every slave now dragging through the filth Of some corrupted city his sad life, Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, Or madly rushing through all violent crime, To move the deep stagnation of his soul,— Might imitate and equal.
But mean lust Has bound its chains so tight around the earth,
That all within it but the virtuous man Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach The price prefixed by selfishness, to all But him of resolute and unchanging will; Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, Can bribe to yield his elevated soul To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.
All things are sold: the very light of heaven Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, The smallest and most despicable things That lurk in the abysses of the deep, All objects of our life, even life itself, And the poor pittance which the laws allow Of liberty, the fellowship of man, Those duties which his heart of human love Should urge him to perform instinctively, Are bought and sold as in a public mart Of undisguising selfishness, that sets On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. Even love is sold; the solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony, old age Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled All human life with hydra-headed woes.
Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest Sets no great value on his hireling faith: A little passing pomp, some servile souls, Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, Can make him minister to tyranny. More daring crime requires a loftier meed: Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart, When the dread eloquence of dying men, Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, Assails that nature, whose applause he sells For the gross blessings of a patriot mob, For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, And for a cold world's good word,—viler still!
There is a nobler glory, which survives Until our being fades, and, solacing All human care, accompanies its change; Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, And, in the precincts of the palace, guides Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime; Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, Even when, from power's avenging hand, he takes Its sweetest, last, and noblest title—death; —The consciousness of good, which neither gold, Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,
Unalterable will, quenchless desire Of universal happiness, the heart That beats with it in unison, the brain, Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.
This commerce of sincerest virtue needs No mediative signs of selfishness, No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, No balancings of prudence, cold and long; In just and equal measure all is weighed, One scale contains the sum of human weal, And one, the good man's heart.
And one, the good man's heart. How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they, Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, Who covet power they know not how to use, And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,— Madly they frustrate still their own designs; And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, Pining regrets, and vain repentances, Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade Their valueless and miserable lives.
But hoary-headed selfishness has felt Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: A brighter morn awaits the human day, When every transfer of earth's natural gifts
Shall be a commerce of good words and works; When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, The fear of infamy, disease, and woe, War with its million horrors, and fierce hell Shall live but in the memory of time, Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, Look back, and shudder at his younger years.