University of Virginia Library

I.—MIND IS POWER.

Mind is the centre of our human power
And action: 'tis that throne of secret law
Where, like a monarch, reigns the regal Will
Supreme in orbit. As this living world
Of varied substance, through its moulded forms
And functions, hath each primal source of change
Not in the region of created strength,
But rather from the will Almighty takes
Each plastic motion, so that time-bound scene
Where man's embodied agencies unveil
His vice, or virtue, good or evil acts,
Not from brute matter, but from conscious mind
Derives mutation, destinies, and deeds.

II.—SENSUAL DOUBT.

Yet, blind in soul, with sensual chains begirt,
The fettered victims of the senses five
In Matter place reality, alone!
Effect remote, contingent and involved,
Their view confounds, and is for cause mistook:
As though the mind a passive myst'ry were
By words created, not in things contained.
But 'tis not thus! All motion, power, and change,
Materially in heaven, or earth, or air
Unfolded, seen, or heard, or felt, or scann'd,
Up to the Mind Eternal must be traced
As their last Root, and secret Law alone.

III.—WHENCE CONDUCT SPRINGS.

Thus Mind, not Matter, is that seat and spring
Whence nature, providence and grace evolve
Their vital actions, on our sense impinged
With frequent pressure. Thus in Science, too,
Where through the medium of material acts
Wonder on wonder to her Priests unfolds
Amazing products, and mechanic force
Unbounded, high o'er all a Power presides
In secret; graced with philosophic name,
Men call it law, but what is law but mind
In ruling action? 'Tis the Will Divine
That, self-enforced, invisible as God,
And shapeless as eternity to thought,
Masters all Nature, moulds her myriad forms
Of growth, or grandeur, and the world empowers.
And hence, what Wisdom learns when most her grasp
Into the oneness of a glorious whole
Hath organised all forms, and facts of Life
Material, is to know her ign'rance more.
For, laws in Nature are our modes of thought,
Our vast conceptions of the unreveal'd
In matter, on whose aid all Science rests
And reasons: but no explanation climbs
That altitude where Law in essence dwells.
What God to faith, that Principle to sense
Becomes,—unseen, but actual, vast and true,
And yet, from sense how infinitely hid
In depths unfathomed! like the modes of grace,
Those methods deep, whereby The Spirit wields
His inward spells o'er all the central life of Man.

IV.—REAL AND UNREAL.

Thus, matter is the instrument of mind,
And mind, as monarch, over matter reigns
With secret magic: thoughts are throneless kings,
Yet, thrones must wither, when their potent sway
Becomes imperial! Then, the slaves of sense
Unlearn the lesson brutal science taught
Mere flesh to credit,—that the True
Is what we witness, handle, taste, or hear;
While Unreality to that belongs
Which faith hath canonised, as law and life
Supreme, by reason loved, and conscience own'd.
But this, how baseless! Power to mind pertains:
Reality within the realm of thought
Abides; and (what from sense is far remote)
Those lone Abstractions, which a lofty Soul
Visions before it, ponders o'er and proves,
Are oft the Factors whence our work-day life
Derives expansion, and more blest is made.
And not more truly can some Bard adapt
Poetic language to melodious thought,
Than to the process of those laws mind-born
Within us sanction'd, God this outer-world
Hath framed, and fashioned. Thus, the most abstract
Creator, who from sensuous earth retires,
While from her watch-towers Speculation eyes
In stillness what ideal problems prove,
Is no fanatic: for, resulting products show
That what pure Thought conceived, creation-laws
Hereafter realise; and hence attest
How facts in mind to forms of matter fit
Their truth, and justify what Thought foretold.

V.—THE INNER WORLD.

The Student, thinking in his mental bower,
Pale, and apart from all our blinded World
Calls useful, what a mock such man beseems
To Mammon's host, or Belial's pamper'd slave!
His world is secret, soundless as the soul
Which doth create it; one of perfect mind.
There, Truths in transcendental glory reign
Harmonious, which are yet by words uncloth'd.
Weeks, months, and years, that Devotee of thought
Works like an Angel, with a perfect will
To his pure toil surrender'd. Time and scene
Affect him not; gain and pleasure pass
His heart unheeded; passionately wed
To some high Problem, life unliving seems
From that divorced: 'tis health, and food to him!
Thus the whole man, in body, soul, and strength
A sacrifice to this achievement made,
Now to the world-wise half a maniac grows!
Or dreaming martyr, whom the moon affects
With visions mad, or theories befool'd.
But Genius is a prophet, priestess, queen;
To speak, to sacrifice, and reign
Her glory is, while inspiration bears
Her being up; and so, the world she braves:
And in those solemn agonies of thought
When brain o'crtask'd becomes a thinking fire,
And flames the blood with fever, still endures
That strong resolve, which makes a Will sublime!
And lo, at length the goal of mind is won,
The problem work'd, the grand result obtain'd;
And deep abstractions, such as Newton seized,
Kepler embraced, or Galileo scann'd
Alone, prophetic Science thus can bring
Down from the heights where speculation soar'd,
To grounds material,—to that homely soil
Where life and commerce, man and income blend,
Or struggle. Now, some calculus is got,
A truth unveil'd, or principle applied
Which moves the World for more than centuries on!
And they, that scornful host of sceptic hearts
Who mock'd the thinker, while creative thought
Was all internal, when 'tis robed with fact,
And 'mid the homes and haunts of life appears
Embodied,—let them now that Lie abjure
Which makes unthinking sense the Lord of soul!
For mind, not matter, is the king of men,
That salient centre whence our human world
All change, and crisis, law and movement takes.

VI.—HISTORY IN MAN.

Coil'd in the secret folds of some vast Mind,
Working unwitness'd, save by God's own eye
Which views a thought as we survey the sun,
The moral Life of ages lies uproll'd.
History unread hath there a virtual root
And fountain: in that comprehensive Soul
Empires, and thrones, and revolutions lie
In principle! there, carnage, crowns and creeds,
Battle and peace, commotions, strife, and change,
Lurk seminally hid, for future sway
Or active function. But, the shallow pause
Oft at the outposts, where material Force
Comes into play, or palpably unfolds
Realities, to earth and space and time
Apparent; yet the secret motive-spring,
The life, the law, the impulse, and the power
Which vivifies what men for History read,
Is viewless thought, a state of will unscann'd.
For years conceal'd, in mental depths contain'd,
Some brooding impulse of the Spirit works,
And thence, as from a pregnant germ, proceed
Gigantic changes which a world upheave
To glory, or in guilt and ruin plunge
Its greatness. History is but man unroll'd,
And man himself, but what the will prefers,
By mental action, or in moral force
Determined. For awhile, 'tis secret all!
Unheard, unknown, the boundless Project forms
And ripens; through ideal worlds of thought
The lone enthusiast, day by day, pursues
His great conception, then departs, and dies.
But, having to some genial few his plan
Discover'd, soon the speculation swells
And strengthens; till, at length, by living force
Develop'd, forth from out the mind's recess
That viewless Energy moves self-revealed
In shape historic; clothes itself with forms
Material; into contact bravely comes
With men and empires; human Life confronts
In all its faculties and myriad spheres
Of influence, such as reach the vital power
Of Nations, creeds, and churches, oft recast;
And now,—the flurried World recoils, and fears!
A sudden palsy over kingdoms falls
Mysterious; truths and principles are touch'd
In essence; baffled Reason looks aghast:
Amid the turbulence and shock of things,
Chaos seems come! And mark! how blinded Sense
Amid the crash of churches, thrones, and states
Around it crumbled, learns at last to see
That by a single Thought, this giant-world
Is moved, as though a moral earthquake shook
Both Past and Present, from their thrones of sway
For ever! Yes, some vast conception lives,
Which once was mind impalpable, and hid.
Results material are but Thoughts array'd
With formal being,—Soul and Will become
Embodied, and for creed and conscience made
Apparent, by the deeds they dare, or do;
But still in essence what they ever were,
As seeds and germs within creative mind
Maturing, where the soul of History dwells.

VII.—LOYOLA.

But, did we crave a specimen, and type
Embodied, how a single Mind can move
Backward or forward, churches, thrones, and creeds,
And on the motion of one mighty will
History depends, when earth and hell are sway'd,
Turn we to him, in whom combine and meet
Passion and principle, which make a Soul
Though single, like omnipotence to act
On men and empires. Turn we unto thee,
Ignatius! with that rich Castilian blood
Rolling within thy veins its noble tide
Ancestral, dreaming, daring, all on fire
With mad devotion, from whose wondrous spell
The glories of the Reformation's power
Receded. Never to a Cause was chain'd
A devotee, more passionately raised
To heights enrapt of superhuman zeal
Than was that flaming heart, when first it felt
How Law, and Gospel, Heaven, and Earth and Hell,
Sin, grace and time, eternity and truth,
In one abysmal thought, The Church of Rome,
Might be absorbed! And thus, to thee, that church
A Christ impersonal on earth became
A dread abstraction, thine almighty all!

VIII.—BATTLE-SCENE.

Beside the radiant Arga's rolling stream
Rise Pampeluna's walls; around them group
Hills of expressive grandeur, huge and high,
Cleaving the crystal air of old Navarre
With pendant summits, while a wooded vale
Of soft extent beneath their umbrage smiles.
'Twas here, enflamed by chivalrous romance
For deeds and darings, such as storied Gaul
In Amadis for ever laurels, stood
Fronting the beach, amid the clanging shock,
And brunt and carnage of a siege prolong'd,
The bold Ignatius! Ne'er hath poet's god,
Or dream-shaped hero, show'd more daring mien
And desperate valour; fighting in the rush
And roaring tumult of a blood-stain'd host
Firm to the last, this lion of Navarre
Contended, till beneath a gory heap,
Shouting the war-song, fell his wounded form
O'erwhelm'd by numbers:—Pampeluna sank;
Then, Gaul's proud banners o'er the towers high waved,
And red with carnage streets and temples ran.

IX.—RELIGIOUS IDEALISM.

The castled walls of his ancestral sires
Shelter'd the Hero; thus, with nerves o'er-strung
Fever'd by pain, emaciate, worn, and rack'd
Through bone and sinew, on his couch he lay
In long confinement: but the soul unchill'd
Burn'd in his being, with a martyr's fire
Heroical and strong; and here the captive fed
With vision, and with reverie sublime
Caught from the legends of the sainted host,
His heated nature,—till a sacred knight
Sworn to the Cross and to the Virgin vow'd,
Ignatius grew! and then, Romance began,
Blent with disease, to madden and inspire
His soul with more than passion, and “The Cross”
Wielded a spell o'er his ignited heart
Transcending human valour. Hence by faith
Etherialised, from fields where Glory wins
Laurels of earth, to scenes where Heaven rewards
Her heroes of celestial temper, turns he now:
And lo! in battle for the church of God,
Founded on Peter, like a war-machine
Against all heretics whom earth and hell
Concentres, yearns Ignatius soon to fight!
Here was a chivalry, whose new-born spell
Beat like a pulse of preternatural force
Fiercely within him! Visions, vast and bright,
Surpassing all apocalyptic Seers beheld,
Daniel conceived, or Chebar's prophet view'd,
Hover'd and hung around him, night and day
With their entrancing glories! Blood and brain
Were fever'd; with such gorgeous fancies thrill'd.
The very poetry of madness seem'd
To shake stern Reason from her throne,
And conscience to its roots. Then, fast and prayer,
Penance, and vigils of enormous length,
Blent with erratic dreams, together work
E'en to pale death this champion of the church
Devoted;—him to Mary ever vow'd,
Mother of God, and Queen of grace-born Souls!

X.—A DEVOTEE.

While thus impassion'd, Salem's heaven-loved soil
Before him glimmers; to that Land of dreams,
Christ's home on earth, by His incarnate Life
Eternalised, the new crusader hies.
Alone, in all the flush of flame-eyed zeal,
Sandalled by rope, with staff and calabash,
Unarm'd, the wounded Pilgrim drags his way
Till old Manreza's gates, at length, unclose
Before him. Here, again before the throne
Of worshipp'd Mary, fast and penance prove
His knighthood, while he hangs his weapons up
Before the imaged Virgin, and his flesh
Devotes to torment in the monkish cell
Of Dominic, that patron of all pangs
Ascetic, which redeem the will to God
Through shirts of pain, and thongs for bloody scourge!
Never did Penance such a hero boast,
As now was witness'd! Round his wasted loins
Clank'd iron fetters; while some thrice a-day
Fell on his frame the blood-absorbing lash:
With bitter ashes was some barren crust
Commingled; prayer, not sleep, the night
Engaged; and on the stair of his damp cell
A kneeling trance of seven-hour length unbroke
He often kept, and starved his body down
Till foodless life look'd death itself begun!
Loathsome his garb, beyond what beggars wear;
While underneath his gaberdine there lay
Thorns, which might pierce with laceration slow
The flesh abhorr'd! But still, the deadly work
Of martyrdom in horrid climax fail'd!
For now to cavern'd darkness lo! he flies
A serried anchorite; there fasting, keeps
His awful vigils, till the pallid gleam
Which through some crevice of the rocky cave
Glimmer'd, on his ghastly features play'd
As though it trembled on such face of death
To glisten! But the peace divine he sought,
Was far as ever from his gasping soul.
Then came the conflict! the convulsion dread
Which, like a living earthquake, heaved and rock'd
The moral ground-work of the man within
Till mind was shatter'd, and the will no more!
Voices, which seem'd from out Damnation's gulph
To issue, yell'd around his inward ear;
While visions, black as fiendish Magic forms,
Floated within him, till he gasp'd and groan'd,
Throbbing, as though the arch-fiend wrestled oft
With his spent anguish! In that hour of hell
When madness, guilt, impiety and dread
Raged in the depths of his convulsèd soul,
Dread Suicide beheld him on the brink
Of lost eternity, about to dash
His headlong spirit down the pit of death:
When, lo! The Virgin, veil'd with robes of light,
Floats in the air, before his eyes entranced
Clasping her infant-God: and, thus recall'd
From murder, straight with bare and bleeding feet
To Salem must that wild ascetic come,
Beggar'd, but not subdued, a Grave to seek,
The Sepulchre most holy of The Lord!
But ere he went, our Lady, to reward
Her dreadless champion, back the heavens unroll'd
Above him; more than Paul unbodied saw
Ignatius witness'd,—what no words reveal!
The Trinity to him unclosed its shades
Of awful Wonder, whose mysterious depths
To sight were open'd! Ages next, retired;
And how Creation at God's bidding rose
From nothing, and the motive whence it came,
His awed imagination then beheld!
And more than this the rapt enthusiast seem'd
To image: an apocalypse of soul
Did to his thought that spell of spells unwind,—
How bread and wine are in the Host transform'd,
And changed to Christ, when priested lips command
A sacramental Incarnation there
God to enshrine, and Calvary repeat!

XI.—MISSION.

By vision strengthen'd, and by faith sublimed
To that fierce boldness which all Earth defies,
And time, or torture, to absorb or tame,
Nerved like a martyr, with his crown in view,
Ignatius onward to the tomb of Christ
Fearless of Saracens, advanceth near.
When, Lo! again, a visionary Christ
Hovers on high, above the blest sepulchral stone
Featured with glory; calls him to convert
The Orient, and His word of burning truth
Thrills through the soul of this heroic man
Like magic, out of Heaven's own music breathed.
And now, the work is done; the dreamer ends!
The cavern'd eremite no more exists
Fever'd by fancies dark: all visions die,
While calm Reality his heart ascends
To reign in wisdom, and the world o'erawe.
The giant from imagination's sleep
Awaketh, what a wond'rous race to run!
Yes, from the cloud-land, where confusion form'd
Ideas, like a mental chaos wild,
Down to the cold the actual and the stern
Descends the dreamer, and is Man again!
Before the sepulchre of Christ is born
That future Jesuit, who the earth rechain'd
To Roman falsehood; glorified the Pope
Like God, and push'd the Reformation back
For centuries, as some fallen Angel might
Reverse by giant craft the Good abhorr'd.
Nor ended he, till over ruin'd minds
And reeling empires, through his master-spell,
A vile theocracy of priesthood rose
As if by miracle! where myriads bow'd
Under his sceptre, like single Will
By God struck prostrate through resistless law.

XII.—THE VOW.

The wings unfold of some three hundred years,
And lo! a vested group of gather'd priests
In mute procession, from beneath the towers
Of Notre Dame there winds its solemn way
On to the capital, which now reposed,
Under the stealing brightness of the dawn
Quiet, in square and street. But, hark! at times
Peels in high cadence with a chanted swell
Their orisons, as o'er the fame-crown'd heights
Of Martre, to that sacred Crypt they move,
Where France believes her first Apostle gain'd
His crown eternal of celestial praise.
Mark, in the front, with war-like mien, and gait
Most kingly, He who leads yon priestly band!
His countenance seems in itself a Church
And Council,—grave, profound, august,
Delved with the lines which deep reflection brings
Upon the brow of Thinkers. From those eyes
That blaze with intellectual fire, there dart
Imperial rays, beneath a godlike front
Which Painting loves to study. None could view
That martial figure, and a King of mind
Imagine not; for, look and step and air
Betray'd his mission. He was born to rule,
And in the world's great heart a crisis form
Of glory, or disaster. Such appear'd
That incarnation of religious guile
Ignatius was, on more than empire bent,
As on to St. Denys' memorial fane
Of martyrdom, he leads his band elect.
And now, when o'er yon sacrificial Bread
The necromantic words of priesthood work
That spell almighty, making God to be!
Are duly mutter'd, hark, the direful Vow!—
A vow, which, had encircling nations been
Around them gather'd, might have palsied kings
And kingdoms! 'Twas an Oath sublime, and stern;
From each of that sworn brotherhood it rose
Significant, and low, and deep as dread,
Rising from man on earth to God in heaven,—
In witness, they in life in limb and thought,
In soul and body, reason, conscience, will,
Prostrate before the Pope, would ever crouch
Slaves of his will, in whom a Christ on earth
Is worshipp'd, as the source of churches all!

XIII.—THE SYSTEM.

Such was the Man! and now, the System view
Reigning victorious, realising all
Its founder imaged, while He watch'd and wept
In cell, or cave, on Tabor's rocky height,
And grew a priest-god, by whose sceptre awed,
Nations and kingdoms, churches, creeds, and states,
All tribes and peoples, passive things became.
Ere twenty years had vanish'd, what a world
Ignatius wielded! more than Pompey dreamt,
Cæsar acquired, or Alexander's heart
Encompass'd, ere he died the Jesuit ruled.
Luther and he were two embodied Types
Of that great Problem, which the earth convulsed
With doubt and danger,—how in one to blend
The rights divine of individual souls
By God created, and by Christ redeem'd,
With that consentient law of common-life
Incorporate, which a perfect Church demands.
Luther for souls, as single, lived and died
In battle; but Ignatius for the Church
Contended, striving to engulph the Man
As unit, in that Body of the whole
Communion, where each separate life expires.

XIV.—PRIESTLY TRIUMPH.

Behold his triumph! In the convent veil'd
By solitude austere, from men remote
Like regal Grandeur, forth his genius sent
A world-wide power, which Empires still obey!
Europe, and Asia, and the far Brazils,
With India's giant realms,—his sceptre touch'd
Them, each and all! Thus, colleges and schools
Rise at his wand, to regulate the homes
And hearts of myriads: cabinets are moved;
Kingdoms admonish'd: councils awed and sway'd:
Battles commenced or sudden peace restored
And strengthen'd,—all betray the master-soul
Of this fam'd Leader. On his royal lip
Law absolute depended; at his word
Obedience rose, and where it will'd, there went
His banded zealots,—brave and lion-hearts
Burning for martyrdom, through East and West
And North and South, the faith of Christ to plant;
Making the desert with the rose of truth
To blossom, and the wilds of sin to bloom
With those rich graces which his Church admires!
Nor did the magic of his subtle power
Pause at conversion; since, to Him applied
Monarchs for help, while queens for civic aid
Besought Him: thus, by law divine he seem'd
Lord absolute o'er thrones and kings to reign,
Whose crown was genius, and his sceptre, mind.

XV.—SERPENTINE WISDOM.

Behold a system deeper than the thoughts
Of ancient Despots, in their dreams of power,
Fathom'd or framed, which now the world o'ertook.
Luther and Calvin, when Ignatius rose,
Had like a storm-blast heaved the mind and heart
Of Empires; mental life and action spread
With speed miraculous; monkish night dispersed,
Like cowering demons by the gaze of Christ
Daunted, and dazzled. Novelty awoke;
The fountains of the spirit's deep were barr'd
Or broken up; creation was abroad
And active; while in science, creed and art
Inventive genius with irruptive force
Burst into sway:—and now, behold! the plan
Both wise and wondrous, by the Jesuits work'd.
Not to reverse by effort mad they tried
The onward rush of European life;
But through the prowess of exceeding mind
Master'd its move, and led the mighty van
Church-ward to Rome, while yet they seem'd to act
And mingle with it! To suspend, or chain
The giant impulse, had their skill surpass'd
However subtle: so the lead they took,
Absorb'd, embodied, gather'd in the whole,
And guided that which else had govern'd them!

XVI.—SPIRITUAL AGGRESSION.

Thus they resolved a problem, dread and deep;
How with pure faith philosophy can blend,
Reason and science with religion act
Their mental freedom. This they strove to show
When Church and College, as two symbols, rose
Together, and their union thus involved.
Here is the secret of that Jesuit-work,
Which won an awful triumph. Mark it well
Student of man! for History hath no page
More to arrest a Thinker, and his thoughts.
To battle with the Reformation-power
Forth to their work those weapon'd Jesuits came,
And ne'er did such Machines of mental war
And conflict, fight with their unearthly skill!
Aggressively, with Nation Creed and Church
They grappled; Science and mechanic Art,
Language and Commerce, Poetry and Lore,
How did they master each, and model all,
Or shape them down to their dread purpose fit!
Man and his motives, mind and heart they probed
And scann'd, they search'd, anatomised, and knew
Where to begin, progress, and how to pause
In each career they ventured. Thus empowered,
These champions of the Roman church became
Resistless, by their secrecy of strength
In action; back the Reformation quail'd
Before them! city after city bow'd
True Liberties beneath their wizard laws;
Princes and people, by such craft inspired,
Barter'd the conscience, till Germanic minds
Which Luther ransom'd, into bondage sank
Abased as ever! Rome again prevail'd;
Darken'd the soul, and dungeon'd half the world
Of free-born Europe in her creed and chains!

XVII.—UBIQUITY OF GUILE.

It looks romance, but solemn archives show
What miracles were by the Jesuits work'd
O'er man and mind, when first their princes waged
Heroic warfare for the Pontiff's throne.
Never was education so profound
As their adapting genius, form'd, and plann'd,
And carried out. But while such home-born minds
Were foster'd, far and wide their missions spread
From China's wall to Paraguay the wild,
Or, where by Ganga's Stream the black Hindoo
Waited for truth to set his spirit free.
Nor paused they here!—in palaces and courts,
In cabinets and councils were they hid
And harbour'd; metamorphosed to all shapes,
Ignatius seem'd self-multiplied, and ruled
By their dark subtleties o'er plots and plans
Tremendous, bloody, dismal, deep, and dire
As Rome conceived, or policy preferr'd.
Thus do we find, at infamous Versailles,
The poison'd words of persecuting Hate
Into the ears of Royalty distill'd
With potency infernal, while true Hearts
In Britain's court were basely undermined
Or master'd; everywhere they move,
And everything they touch, pervade and thrill;
All places reach; all powers affect, or change:
No person safe, no principle secure!
From cot to court, from king to subject down,
Their zeal can like an omnipresence act.
Equal for them, to whom the Pope is God,
All powers of State; all governments the same!
Each to his Church is creature, slave, or tool;
Crime is not criminal, when She commands
The deed enormous! treason noble looks,
And murder from the decalogue departs
No more forbidden, should the Church require
A splendid victim for her crown and cause!
“A Jesuit!” well might childish dread conceive
That Name far more than mortal nature clothed!
Satanic wisdom seem'd almost surpass'd
By them who bore it; guile and darkness there
Concenter'd all which intellectual Fiends,
On earth embodied, might for falsehood wield
Were Pandemonium in the mind to reign.

XVIII.—MECHANISM FOR SOULS.

But if the ground-work of that guile intense
And spell, whereby the man unsoul'd becomes
Enslaved to priesthood, we desire to search,
A Book behold, by right “mysterious” call'd;
For here, mechanics for the Mind exist
Which, when by crafty discipline applied
And studied, render man a living corpse
In spirit,—an automaton for Priests
To mechanise, until The Church appears
A thinking substitute, a faith-machine,
And swathes the Will with swaddling bands which bind
Men to obedience, passive, base, and blind
As absolute! And now, de-natured man
Sinks from a Person, and a Thing becomes,
Depress'd and dwarf'd, a mass of featured clay
Whence mental faculty and moral force
Have been absorb'd! Yet, libel not that God
From whom Humanity her birth derives,
When thus impersonal, by calling such
A “Man!” Spontaneous will and thoughts are dead,
Or, sunk and swallow'd in the church of priests;
Conscience expires; the mind can think no more;
A soulless thing, an accident, or show,
A mere Negation for a man mistook
Is all that such mechanics for the mind
Can boast of; but their ruling charm succeeds!
The Formula of hideous falsehood works;
Conversion by mechanical result
In thirty days is certain, ere one moon
Can vanish! Let the “Exercise” be used
Completely; let each posture, gait, and groan
Be duly balanced: let the dismal curse
Of silence, solitude, and darken'd rooms
Be wreak'd, together with an imaged Hell
Shaped from imagination's horrid depths
Of blackness, where the howling Fiends are heard,—
Such let the neophyte of Priests enact,
And lo, conversion! passive as a stick
Wielded by aged pilgrims when they walk,
Or helpless as a shrouded corpse, when moved
By living creatures,—view the Convert now!

XIX.—PERSONALITY DESTROYED.

What God created thus a Priest destroys,—
Man with a Soul! for now, that Soul reduced
By such absorption, in the Church resolves
Its nature: 'tis no more a choosing Power
Or Person; stifled reason hath expired
In self-renouncement; what is left, the Shape,
But not the Substance, of a man remains.
'Tis but an Organ, made of sigh, and sob, and speech!
Now on bare knees: then, prostrate in the cell
Of anguish; now, for ritual drama garb'd
And spangled; then, engaged in mumbling rounds
Of words, where sense through repetition dies,
Or the tired breath monotonously tones
Ave Marias! till the lip-work dire
Achieves its penance. What a boast is here!
When thus a mechanising Priest can make
Persons turn Things, and Things like corpses lie
Passive and powerless: such the Jesuit seeks
To govern, and despotic Rome demands.

XX.—OBEDIENCE.

Monster of systems is the Jesuit-school!
Police and treason, accusations dire
As dismal, each on each a dragon-watch
Keeping incessant, so that counter-spies
Thus exercised, a bosom-hell create.
Suspicion lowrs on ev'ry guarded brow
Of this dark Band, whose jealous eyes are keen,
Prompt to denounce each alter'd shade of mind
Assumed disloyal. Thus, the living pulse
Of pure Emotion is by terror chill'd
Or death-struck; social life exhales,
And all enacted, is obedience now
Under the yoke of thy cadaverous Rule,
Ignatius! Fiends o'er such a scheme exult;
But Angels, could they our dejection know,
Might shudder, veil their eyes, and weep for Souls!