(S 1)
A race possessed inhabited those parts.
(S 2)
A force demoniac lurking in man’s depths
That heaves suppressed by the heart’s human law,
445 Awed by the calm and sovereign eyes of Thought,
Can in a fire and earthquake of the soul
Arise and, calling to its native night,
Overthrow the reason, occupy the life
And stamp its hoof on Nature’s shaking ground:
450 This was for them their being’s flaming core.
(S 3)
A mighty energy, a monster god,
Hard to the strong, implacable to the weak,
It stared at the harsh unpitying world it made
With the stony eyelids of its fixed idea.
(S 4)
455 Its heart was drunk with a dire hunger’s wine,
In others’ suffering felt a thrilled delight
And of death and ruin the grandiose music heard.
(S 5)
To have power, to be master, was sole virtue and good:
It claimed the whole world for Evil’s living room,
460 Its party’s grim totalitarian reign
The cruel destiny of breathing things.
(S 6)
All on one plan was shaped and standardised
Under a dark dictatorship’s breathless weight.
(S 7)
In street and house, in councils and in courts
465 Beings he met who looked like living men
And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought
But harboured all that is subhuman, vile
And lower than the lowest reptile’s crawl.
(S 8)
The reason meant for nearness to the gods
470 And uplift to heavenly scale by the touch of mind
Only enhanced by its enlightening ray
Their inborn nature’s wry monstrosity.
(S 9)
Often, a familiar visage studying
Joyfully encountered at some dangerous turn,
475 Hoping to recognise a look of light,
His vision warned by the spirit’s inward eye
Discovered suddenly Hell’s trademark there,
Or saw with the inner sense that cannot err,
In the semblance of a fair or virile form
480 The demon and the goblin and the ghoul.
(S 10)
An insolence reigned of cold stone-hearted strength
Mighty, obeyed, approved by the Titan’s law,
The huge laughter of a giant cruelty
And fierce glad deeds of ogre violence.
(S 11)
485 In that wide cynic den of thinking beasts
One looked in vain for a trace of pity or love;
There was no touch of sweetness anywhere,
But only Force and its acolytes, greed and hate:
There was no help for suffering, none to save,
490 None dared resist or speak a noble word.
(S 12)
Armed with the aegis of tyrannic Power,
Signing the edicts of her dreadful rule
And using blood and torture as a seal,
Darkness proclaimed her slogans to the world.
(S 13)
495 A servile blinkered silence hushed the mind
Or only it repeated lessons taught,
While mitred, holding the good shepherd’s staff,
Falsehood enthroned on awed and prostrate hearts
The cults and creeds that organise living death
500 And slay the soul on the altar of a lie.
(S 14)
All were deceived or served their own deceit;
Truth in that stifling atmosphere could not live.
(S 15)
There wretchedness believed in its own joy
And fear and weakness hugged their abject depths;
505 All that is low and sordid-thoughted, base,
All that is drab and poor and miserable,
Breathed in a lax content its natural air
And felt no yearning of divine release:
Arrogant, gibing at more luminous states
510 The people of the gulfs despised the sun.
(S 16)
A barriered autarchy excluded light;
Fixed in its will to be its own grey self,
It vaunted its norm unique and splendid type:
It soothed its hunger with a plunderer’s dream;
515 Flaunting its cross of servitude like a crown,
It clung to its dismal harsh autonomy.
(S 17)
A bull-throat bellowed with its brazen tongue;
Its hard and shameless clamour filling Space
And threatening all who dared to listen to truth
520 Claimed the monopoly of the battered ear;
A deafened acquiescence gave its vote,
And braggart dogmas shouted in the night
Kept for the fallen soul once deemed a god
The pride of its abysmal absolute.