40
THE ASCENT OF MAN.
Where, for Conscience' sake,
Heretics burn chaunting at the stake.
Subterranean secrets of the prison,
Throbs of anguish in the crushing cell.
Torture-chambers of the Inquisition
Are the Church's antidotes to Hell.
Better rack them here,
Mutilate and sear,
Than their souls should go
To the place of everlasting woe.
And a lurid universal night,
Lit by quenchless fires for unquenched sages,
Thick with spectral broods that shun the light,
Looms impervious o'er the stifled ages
Where the blameless wise
Fall a sacrifice,
Fall as fell of old
The unspotted firstlings of the fold.
