Tis blessèd to believe; you say: The saying may be true enow And it can add to Life a light: only remains to show us how.
Een if I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dullèd ear of drowsy wight.
With Gods foreknowledge mans free will! what monster-growth of human brain, What powers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?
Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such aid to seek were hardly wise For man must own the pitiless Law that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.
Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heaven, come pay the priest that holds the key; So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven,he.
Are these the words for men to hear? yet such the Churchs general tongue, The horseleech-cry so strong so high her heavenward Psalms and Hymns among.
What? Faith a merit and a claim, when with the brain tis born and bred? Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy water burièd dead!
Yet follow not th unwisdom-path, cleave not to this and that disclaim; Believe in all that man believes; here all and naught are both the same.
But is it so? How may we know? Haply this Fate, this Law may be A word, a sound, a breath; at most the Zâhids moonstruck theory.
Yes Truth may be, but tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There, But Where nor I nor you can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare.
Enough to think that Truth can be: come sit we where the roses glow, Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.
Man hath no Soul, a state of things, a no-thing still, a sound, a word Which so begets substantial thing that eye shall see what ear hath heard.
Where was his Soul the savage beast which in primeval forests strayed, What shape had it, what dwelling-place, what part in natures plan it played?
This Soul to ree a riddle made; who wants the vain duality? Is not myself enough for me? what need of I within an I?
Words, words that gender things! The soul is a new-comer on the scene; Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine?
We know the Genesis of the Soul; we trace the Soul to hour of birth; We mark its growth as grew mankind to boast himself sole Lord of Earth: