What gross injustice is the rule of life! A sentient being made without a will, And placed a cat’s-paw in the hands of Fate, Who rakes the moral embers for a sin, That, found, must burn the helpless one alone. All right and wrong, and whate’er makes man man, Are gone, and language is half obsolete; No need of words to tell of moral worth Existing not, nor e’en conceivable; No words of blame or commendation, given According to the intention of a deed; No words of cheer or comfort, to incite, For man must act without our useless tongues; No words of prayer, if Fate supplies our wants; No words of prayer, if Fate locks up her store; No words of love, for fondest love were loathed If fanned by Fate to flame. No words of hate, For all forgive a wrong when helpless done; The buds that bloom upon the desert heart Lose all their sweetness when they’re forced to grow; All pleasure’s marred because it is not earned, And pain more painful since ’tis undeserved. Man falling from his high estate, becomes A brute with keener sensibilities; Endowed with mind, upon whose plastic face Fate writes its batch of lies; poor man believes, And prates of moral agency, and cants Of good _he_ does, and evil that _he_ shuns. With blind content, he rests in false belief, And happy thus escapes the mental rack-- The consciousness of what he really is. And yet why false belief? The world believes, And acting, moves in general harmony; Could harmony from such an error flow? Would all believe, would not some one Have doubted by his works as well as faith? The veriest skeptic walks the earth to-day, As if he held the seal of freest will, And shapes its course, and judges all mankind By freedom’s rule. Then may not that be true Which most believe, and those who doubt profess In every act; as that which few believe And to which none conform? Two paths I see, One marked Free-Will, the other Fate. The first, Extending far as human thought can reach, Through lovely meads with sweetest flowers, and fruits Of actions clearly shown as right and wrong, Because of choice ’twixt the two; of laws With sanction suiting agents who are free; Of courts acquitting the insane of crime, Of crime made crime, alone, when done as crime, Of judgment passed by public sentiment On action in the ratio of liberty. Delightful view; but seek an entrance there-- The towering bars of unruled motive stand Before the path, and none can overleap.