Man learns, in this Valhalla of his soul, To love, nor ever finds “Love’s Labor Lost.” No two-faced Falstaff proffers double suit; No Desdemona mourns Iago’s art; And every Romeo finds his Juliet. The stroke of Death is but a kindly frost, Which cracks the shell, and leaves the kernel room To germinate. What most consummate fools This fear of death doth make us! Reason plays The craven unto sense, and in her fear Chooses the slow and slavish death of life, Rather than freedom in the life of death. “Thus _Ignorance_ makes cowards of us all,” And blinds us to our being’s best estate. Madly we cling to life through nameless ills, Pinched by necessity, and scourged by fate, Fainting in heat and freezing in the cold, While war, and pestilence, and sore distress, Fever and famine, fire and flood, combine To drive the spirit from its wreck of clay. O, poor Humanity! How full of blots, And stains, and pains, and miseries thou art! Here let me be thine Antony, and plead Thy cause against the slayers of thy peace. Though wounded, yet thou art not dead, thou child Of Immortality--thou heir of God! He who would slay thee, be he brute or Brutus, Plunges the dagger in his own vile heart. And yet thy wounds are piteous. I could weep That aught so fair from the Creator’s hand Should be so marred and mangled, like a lamb Torn by the ravening wolves. Here, let me take Thy mantle, pierced with gaping, ghastly wounds, From daggers clutched by ingrate hands. O Truth! How many, in thy sacred name, have slain Humanity, thinking they did God service! Rome, and not Cæsar--Doctrines, and not Men. I cannot count the wounds which lust for power, And wealth, and place, and precedence have made. But, O! the keenest, deepest, deadliest stabs Of all, were made by false Philosophy And false Theology combined-- Philosophy, that knew not what it did; Theology, that did not what it knew. See here! This rent made by the fear of God, That gracious God, whose “mercy seasons justice,” Who feeds the raven, clothes the lilies, heeds The sparrow when it falls, and sends his rain Alike upon the evil and the good. And yet they were all “honorable men” Who taught this doctrine--“_honorable men!_” Whose failing was a lack of common sense. And, lo! here is another--Fear of Truth-- Blind Superstition made this horrid rent, And Bigotry quick followed up the thrust. O, ’tis an eye weeping great tears of blood! An eagle eye, that dared to love the light Which Bigotry and Superstition feared, Lest it should make their deeds of evil plain. Thus is it, he who dares to see a Truth Not recognized in creeds, must die the death. But noon-day never stayed for bats and owls, And Truth’s clear light shall yet arise and shine.