Hope in God (L’espoir en Dieu)

Now, ere this feeble heart beneath youth’s spell,
To its illusions bids a last farewell,
I fain would keep the old philosophy
Which makes Epicurus divinity.
I fain would live and love, and learn mankind,
In quest of joy, small profit hope to find,
And do what men can do, be what they are,
Gaze upward to the sky nor feel one care.

I cannot; me the infinite torments,
Fearless to dwell thereon hope consents;
Heedless of men’s words, reason is dismayed
To comprehend it not, though clear displayed.
What is the world, what are we doing here,
If we, in peace, must veil the skies in fear,
To move like sheep, eyes fixed upon the ground,
Deny the rest, can that be pleasure found?
It is no man to be, degrade the soul.
Chance made no part in the created whole;
Or happy, or unhappy, woman born,
I cannot flee away from men in scorn.

What shall we do? Seek joy, command the wise,
Rejoice and die; the gods to sleep advise.

Hope only, answers our firm Christian faith,
Heaven watches thee. Thou canst not die, it saith.
Between two roads I, wavering, stop and stay,
Aloof, would follow easier, gentler way.
Not one exists, so speaks a secret voice,
Believe, deny, there is the heaven-given choice.
And such my thought; for souls with torture burn;
Make mere excuses, this, or that, in turn.
But the indifferents are an atheist's rout.
They could not sleep had they one day of doubt.
I yield me then and since the thought has bred,
Deep in my heart desire and anxious dread,
My knees shall bend, with hope I will believe.
What fate is mine, what would high heaven receive?

Held in the hand of God, more dread, I go,
Than all the ills combined here below.
Alone, a wanderer, frail, wretched man,
My deeds that witness eye must ever scan.
He watches, follows. Let heart beat too high
It might His great divinity defy.
A gulf is 'neath my feet. If I fall in,
Eternity will expiate my sin.
My hangman, judge, with victim plays his game,
For me is all a snare, all changing name;
Love is a sin, and happiness a crime,
Temptation all that work of seven days' time.
Of human nature naught can I retain,
Virtue for me is dead, remorse they feign.
The recompense I wait, the pain I shun,
My guide is fear, toward death, my mask, I run.

And still, they tell me, waits unbounded joy
The elect. And when those blest without alloy,
If you deceive me, will you life deny?
If you speak to me, so can you ope the sky?
That land of beauty of the prophet’s cry,
If it exists above, must be a desert dry.
The blest you make you wish them all too pure,

Though joy may come, the suffering more sure.
I am a man no more, would not be less,
Nor try for more. What shall I then confess?
Since I believe no promises of priest,
Shall I then go consult the indifferent beast?

And if by haunting visions thus bent,
My heart the real seeks some joy to get,
With each vain pleasure summoned to my aid,
Disgust and gloomy death my sense invade.
The very days when impious is my thought,
When ending doubt denial full has brought,
Should I attain whatever in this life
Each man can seek with vast desire and strife,
Both power, and health and riches freely give,
And love itself, the good for which we live,
Let fair Astarte, idol of ancient Greece,
Outspread her arms from azure lands of peace,
Could I explore the bosom of the earth,
To win the secret elemental birth,
Transform enlivening matter to my will,
Make matchless beauty my desire to still;
Should Horace, Epicurus old,
Me at their side a happy mortal hold,
Should they, in love with nature’s ancient code,
Loud sing of joy and contempt of God,
My words would come "Whatever we may be done,
I suffer on, the world is older grown.
Hope fills the earth with infinite surmise,
In our despite toward heaven we lift our eyes!"

What then remains? Reason revolts, breaks out,
Tries to believe, in vain, the heart to doubt.
The Christian frightens, but the atheist creed
Despite the senses, shall not hear nor heed.
To truly pious men impious seem,
Me, the indifferent, merely crazy deem.
To whom shall I resort, what voice’s sound
Shall soothe this heart when doubt inflicts its wound?

There is, they say, one philosophic creed
Which can without a revelation read,
Can guide us safely through our existence,
Betwixt religion and indifference.
I acquiesce. But where are they who frame
Systems of truth nor wish the faith to name,
Sophistic impotents, believing but themselves,
What are the arguments, their reason delves?
One shows me here two principles at war,
Which, both defeated, both immortal are;
Another finds far off within some heaven lone,
A useless god who asks no altar stone.
I see the dreams of Plato, Aristotle see;
I listen, praise and walk my pathway free.
Under the monarch find a despot God.
To-day he gives a democratic nod.
Pythagoras, Leibnitz both me transform.
Descartes abandons me in vortex storm.
Montaigne, self-student, nothing learns and sees.
Pascal, a-tremble, his own vision flees.
Pyrrho my sight, and Zeno senses, takes,
Whatever stands, Voltaire casts down and breaks.
Trying th’ impossible with wearied air,
Spinosa finds his God is everywhere.
The English sophist cries, Man's a machine,
And in the fog a German rhetor's seen,
Who of philosophism, ruin wrought,
Declares our heaven void, concludes with naught.

So human science then becomes a wreck!
Five thousand years of doubt are at our beck,
Five thousand years of persevering fag
With doubt, as final word, perplexed we lag.
Ah! poor distracted, paltry human brains,
How intricate your key that all explains;
To mount above, no wings upon your back,

Desire you have, but faith alone you lack.
I pity pride, that racks your wounded soul.
You feel the torments round my heart that roll.
You understand it, all that bitter sight
Which makes man shudder at the Infinite.
Pray we! Forswear the miserable toil
Of childish reckonings, petty futile moil.
Now that your bodies have returned to dust,
Fall on my knees beside your tombs, I must.
Ye pagan rhetors, first in knowledge, come,
Departed Christians, dreamers here at home:
Believe me, prayer is hope’s expectant voice!
That God, man answer; speak to Him, rejoice,
For God is just and good to pardon send.
Your sufferings great, the rest to Him commend.
If bare is heaven, to none offense we make;
One, if he hears, shall on us pity take.

Oh! Thou whom none has ever known,
Nor being false, can e'er deny
Who gave me life, 'twas Thou alone,
And who, to-morrow makes me die!

By faith alone, art understood.
If faith be ours, why doubts of Thee?
Why give not faith in measure good,
That none may say Thou canst not be?

As soon as man lifts up his head,
To that great temple in the skies,
He sees a vast creation spread,
A glorious temple in his eyes.

When now descends into his heart,
He finds Thee there; thou livest in him.
He can not weep or love apart,
'Tis God alone, wills every whim.

The highest aim of human thought,
The grandest rôle as played by man,
To prove Thou dost exist, be taught
Thy name, O everlasting One.

Whatever name Thou mayest be called,
Jesus, or Jupiter, Brahma,
Or Truth Eternal, thus extolled,
Toward Thee all arms are stretched, Allah!

The latest of the sons of earth
Will give thee thanks, from grateful heart,
When misery is turned to mirth,
And happiness appears in part.

The whole world gives Thee glory, praise.
The bird sings sweetly on its nest;
To Thee, for rain of rainy days,
A thousand anthems are addressed.

Thy every act astounds our gaze,
Nor ray of love divine is lost,
No soul so vile, Thou canst not raise,
For this we kneel upon the dust.

Why, then, O Master, so supreme,
Hast Thou created evil great?
That reason, virtue, in its gleam,
On seeing it, affrighted wait!

When all the splendid things of earth
Proclaim Thy attributes divine,
Bear witness to a father’s worth,
Love, strength and goodness will combine.

Then how in view of heaven’s sight,
Are acts so full of hideous hate,
That prayer will die, unhappy plight!
On lips of the unfortunate?

Why, in Thy heavenly work of love,
Should discord draw unhappy breath?
What is it crime and pest may prove?
Just God! Why should we suffer death?

Thy pity must have been profound
When, with its blessings and its ills,
This world with love and horror crowned,
Came forth from chaos! Sadness fills

My heart, to think Thou didst submit
Thy sons to torture! Can Thy sight
Find pleasure in the burning pit?
Thy power for good is infinite.

Why shall the misery of earth
Conceive of, and divine, a God?
Doubt has despoiled our heavenly birth.
In place of Thee, we feel the rod.

If these, Thy creatures, are so base,
Unworthy of approaching Thee,
In nature Thou shouldst leave no trace
By which Thou might discovered be.

Thy power would remain no less,
And we still feel its heavy blow;
But rest and ignorance, we confess,
Would make our ills more mild, we,know.

If suffering, and prayer, and praise,
Move not thy glorious majesty,
Preserve Thy grandeur from our gaze;
In Space’s dread immensity.

But if our mortal anguish touch
Thy heart with pity, if Thine ear
Amid the heavenly songs, be such
As can our direst moaning hear,

Shatter that canopy of space
That hides our eager quest of Theee.
Tear down the veil that mars thy grace,
And show thyself, most amiably.

Then wilt Thou see on earth a flame
Of firmest faith and burning love.
All earth will then adore Thy name,
As do the heavenly hosts above.

The years which have exhausted it,
The burning tears that dimmed its eyes,
Like dew beneath the sun shall flit,
And earth will be one paradise.

Then Thou will hear hosannas sung
In concerts of celestial joy,
Like heavenly music heard among
The courts of heaven, which saints enjoy.

Our chants would sound o'er land and sea,
And Pain and Hate would howling fly,
And Doubt and Blasphemy would flee,
And Death itself, at last, would die.