 | The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield |  |
Yet by worst means to know the worst resolved,
The priestled multitude, e'er then, as now,
To Isis' shrine of shame and godless priests
Pompeii's loveliest virgin —in the bud
Of innocence and beauty, love and joy,
By men most evil doomed to die, that Fate,
Through her prevailing blood, may speak their doom.
Alas! must Death, from his pale realms of fear,
Breathe on that beautiful and radiant brow
And leave it blasted: on the blossomed lips,
Whence music gushed in streams of rainbow thought,
And chill them into breathlessness and gloom?
That vermil cheek—those eyes, where thoughts repose,
Like clustered stars on the blue autumn skies,
That head of beauty and that heart of love—
Oh, must they languish, moulder, and depart,
Without a sigh, from the sweet earth they loved?
Nought may the grief, wrath, agony, despair
Of friends or kindred—nought the holiest laws
Of Love—avail to shield the victim maid;
The Priest will have his sacrifice, though Earth
And Heaven shriek out—'T is Lust's own sacrilege.’
Ne'er hath the bigot, whatsoe'er his crown
Cidaris, mitre, oak or laurel wreath,
Spared, having power to torture. Ne'er the slave
Of superstition slackened in his zeal
Of loving God by loathing humankind.
Weep with the crocodile—embrace the asp—
Doubt not the avalanche of ages—meet
The famished wolf's sardonic smile—and sleep
Who clothes the Demon in a seraph's robe.
Human sacrifices were not uncommon during the earlier periods of the Greek and Roman history; and I cast no additional discredit upon the ancient character of heathenism, by representing the disappointed consulters of the gods putting in action their cannibal ferocities. Iphigenia and Jephtha's daughter illustrate Grecian mythology and Jewish vows.
I appeal to all history, civil, ecclesiastical and profane. Persecution is not exclusive; give preponderance to any sect or faction and it will tyrannize; the faggot would be lighted, the dungeon filled, the deathaxe red. The civil power would collude with the church as it has always done, when the latter claimed the prerogatives of heaven to exempt it from human accountability—because superstitious ignorance fears more the anathemas of a priesthood than the agonies and blood of a thousand victims. Representations of eternal punishments due to those who indulge humanity, by sparing the proscribed, the heretics, namely—have influenced mankind far more than the view of nations banished and provinces depopulated by the relentless malignity of some Torquemada of paynimrie or Christendom. Factions and sects, in politics and religion, never yet won anything but ruin and disgrace, yet they are perpetuated and multiplied as the world wears to waste!
| The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield | |