Satan

Or Heaven. Forgive it, Lord, I spoke it in my haste. See, I withdraw the word. Thy Christendom is wise, reformed. None buy nor sell Seats now at Thy right hand, (aside) grown quite unsaleable. None now believe nor tremble--Yet is their sin as sore. Lord, hear me to the end. Thou dravest me out of yore An exile from Thy sight, with mission to undo And tempt Man to his death. I had fallen from Heaven's blue By reason of my pride. Thou wouldst have service done Unreasoning, on the knees, as flowers bend to the Sun, Which withers them at noon, nor ask of his white fires Why they consume and slay. I had fallen by my desires Which were too large for one not God, because I would Have shewn Thee the truth bare, in no similitude As a slave flattering speaks and half despises him He fawns on, but in love, which stands erect of limb Claiming an equal part, which reasons, questions, dares, And calls all by its name, the wheat wheat, the tares tares, The friend friend, the foe foe. Thou wast displeased at this, And deemed I envied Man his portion in Thy bliss, The Man that Thou hadst made and in Thy royal faith Held worthy of all trust, Thy lord of life and death, One to be proved and tried, as gold is tried by fire, And fare the purer forth. Of me Thou didst require The sad task of his tempting. I, forsooth, must sue And prompt to evil deeds, make the false thought seem true, The true thought false, that he, thus proved, thus tried, might turn And hurl me a dog's word, as Jesus did, in scorn "Get thee behind Me, Satan!" To this penance chained I bowed me in despair, as Thou, Lord, hadst ordained, Cast out from Thee and cursed. It was a rueful task For one who had known Thee to wear the felon's mask And tempt this piteous child to his base sins of greed, His lusts ignoble, crimes how prompt in act and deed, To urge him to rebellion against God and good Who needed none to urge. His savage simian blood Flamed at a word, a sign. He lied, he thieved, he slew, By instinct of his birth. No virtue but he knew Its countervice and foil, without my wit to aid. No fair thought but he chose the foul thought in its stead. Ah sad primaeval race! Thou saidst it was not Man This thing armed with the stone which through thy forests ran, Intent to snare and slay. Not Man the senseless knave Who struck fire from his flint to burn Thy gorses brave, Thy heaths for his lean kine, who, being the one unclean, Defiled thy flower-sweet Earth with ordure heaps obscene To plant his rice, his rye. Not Man, saidst Thou, because He knew not of Thy way nor had he learned Thy laws, And was stark savage still. Not Man? Behold to-day Thy tamed Man as he lives, Thy Son of Japhet, nay Thy new true-Christened King, the follower of Thy Christ, Who sweareth by Thy name and his own mailed fist That Thou art Lord of all and he the Lord of Thee, Heaven's instrument ordained to teach integrity. Thinkest Thou the man is changed, the ape that in him is Because his limbs are clothed which went in shamelessness? Are his lusts bridled more because his parts are hid? Nay, Lord, he doeth to-day as those forefathers did, Only in greater guile. I will tell Thee his full worth, This Man's, the latest born, Thy creature from his birth Who lords it now, a king, this white Man's who hath pressed All Earth to his sole bondage and supreme behest, This Man of all Mankind. Behold him in Thy place, Administering the World, vicegerent of Thy grace And agent named of Thee, the symbol and the sign Of Thy high will on Earth and purposing divine, Clothed in his robes of power. Whence was he? What is he That he asserteth thus his hand's supremacy? His lineage what? Nay, Lord, he cometh of that mad stem Harder in act than Ham's, more subtle than of Shem, The red Japhetic stock of the bare plains which rolled A base born horde on Rome erewhile in lust of gold, Tide following tide, the Goth, Gaul, Vandal, Lombard, Hun, Spewed forth from the white North to new dominion In the fair southern lands, with famine at their heel And rapine in their van, armed to the lips with steel. These made their spoil of all, the pomp of the world's power, Its wealth, its beauty stored, all Rome's imperial dower, Her long renown, her skill, her art, her cultured fame, And with the rest her faiths bearing the Christian name. From this wild bitter root of violent lust and greed New Christendom upsprang, a pagan blood-stained creed, Pagan in spite of Christ, for the old gods cast down Still ruled it in men's hearts and lured them to renown, Ay in Thy name, Lord God, by glamour of the sword, And for Thy dead Son's sake, as in the days abhorred. Like bulls they strove, they slew, like wolves they seized the prey, The hungriest strongest first, and who should say them nay. After the Goth the Gaul, after the Gaul the Dane, Kings in descent from Thor, peace sued to them in vain. Thou knowest, Lord God, their story. It is writ in blood, The blood of beast and man, by their brute hands subdued, Down to the latest born, the hungriest of the pack, The master wolf of all men call the Sassenach, The Anglo-Norman dog, who goeth by land and sea As his forefathers went in chartered piracy, Death, fire in his right hand.