And now at last authentic word I bring, Witnessed by every dead and living thing; Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: There is no God; no Fiend with names divine 40 Made us and tortures us; if we must pine, It is to satiate no Being's gall. It was the dark delusion of a dream, That living Person conscious and supreme, Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; 45 Whom we must curse because the life he gave Could not be buried in the quiet grave, Could not be killed by poison or the knife. This little life is all we must endure, The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, 50 We fall asleep and never wake again; Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh In earth, air, water, plants, and other men. We finish thus; and all our wretched race 55 Shall finish with its cycle, and give place To other beings with their own time-doom: Infinite aeons ere our kind began; Infinite aeons after the last man Has joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb. 60 We bow down to the universal laws, Which never had for man a special clause Of cruelty or kindness, love or hate: If toads and vultures are obscene to sight, If tigers burn with beauty and with might, 65 Is it by favour or by wrath of Fate? All substance lives and struggles evermore Through countless shapes continually at war, By countless interactions interknit: If one is born a certain day on earth, 70 All times and forces tended to that birth, Not all the world could change or hinder it. I find no hint throughout the Universe Of good or ill, of blessing or of curse; I find alone Necessity Supreme; 75 With infinite Mystery, abysmal, dark, Unlighted ever by the faintest spark For us the flitting shadows of a dream. O Brothers of sad lives! they are so brief; A few short years must bring us all relief: 80 Can we not bear these years of laboring breath? But if you would not this poor life fulfil, Lo, you are free to end it when you will, Without the fear of waking after death.-- The organ-like vibrations of his voice 85 Thrilled through the vaulted aisles and died away; The yearning of the tones which bade rejoice Was sad and tender as a requiem lay: Our shadowy congregation rested still As brooding on that "End it when you will." 90 XV Wherever men are gathered, all the air Is charged with human feeling, human thought; Each shout and cry and laugh, each curse and prayer, Are into its vibrations surely wrought; Unspoken passion, wordless meditation, 5 Are breathed into it with our respiration It is with our life fraught and overfraught.