Before a Crucifix, by Swinburne

Algernon C. Swinburne (1837-1909) was an English poet, writing in Victorian times.  A later poet, his compatriot Laurence Binyon, calls him “a man of genius” and praises the “torrents of eloquence and marvellous melodies” of his poetry. He outraged many of his society by his subject matter and language, as well as in his outrageous behaviour.  (Quotations from L. Binyon’s introduction to the Wordsworth Poetry Library edition of The Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1995)

In this poem, published in 1871, Swinburne condemns Christianity in the strongest possible terms.

BEFORE A CRUCIFIX

Here, down between the dusty trees,
   At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
   With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
   Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
   To which they bring their pains and prayers;
Lean limbs that shew the labouring bones,
And ghastly mouth that gapes and groans.

God of this grievous people, wrought
   After the likeness of their race,
By faces like thine own besought,
   Thine own blind helpless eyeless face,
I too, that have nor tongue nor knee
For prayer, I have a word to thee.

It was for this then, that thy speech
   Was blown about the world in flame
And men’s souls shot up out of reach
   Of fear or lust or thwarting shame -
That thy faith over souls should pass
As sea-winds burning the grey grass?

It was for this, that prayers like these
   Should spend themselves about thy feet,
And with hard overlaboured knees
   Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat
Bosoms too lean to suckle sons
And fruitless as their orisons?

It was for this, that men should make
   Thy name a fetter on men’s necks,
Poor men’s made poorer for thy sake,
   And women’s withered out of sex?
It was for this, that slaves should be,
Thy word was passed to set men free?

The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls
   Now deathward since thy death and birth.
Hast thou fed full men’s starved-out souls?
   Hast thou brought freedom upon earth?
Or are there less oppressions done
In this wild world under the sun?

Nay, if indeed thou be not dead,
   Before thy terrene shrine be shaken,
Look down, turn usward, bow thine head;
   O thou that wast of God forsaken,
Look on thine household here, and see
These that have not forsaken thee.

Thy faith is fire upon their lips,
   Thy kingdom golden in their hands;
They scourge us with thy words for whips,
   They brand us with thy words for brands;
The thirst that made thy dry throat shrink
To their moist mouths commends the drink.

The toothed thorns that bit thy brows
   Lighten the weight of gold on theirs;
Thy nakedness enrobes thy spouse
   With the soft sanguine stuff she wears
Whose old limbs use for ointment yet
Thine agony and bloody sweat.

The blinding buffets on thine head
   On their crowned heads confirm the crown;
Thy scourging dyes their raiment red,
   And with thy bands they fasten down
For burial in the blood-bought field
The nations by thy stripes unhealed.

With iron for thy linen bands
   And unclean cloths for winding-sheet
They bind the people’s nail-pierced hands,
   They hide the people’s nail-pierced feet;
And what man or what angel known
Shall roll back the sepulchral stone?

But these have not the rich man’s grave
   To sleep in when their pain is done.
These were not fit for God to save.
   As naked hell-fire is the sun
In their eyes living, and when dead
These have not where to lay their head.

They have no tomb to dig, and hide;
   Earth is not theirs, that they should sleep.
On all these tombless crucified
   No lovers’ eyes have time to weep.
So still, for all man’s tears and creeds,
The sacred body hangs and bleeds.

Through the left hand a nail is driven,
   Faith, and another through the right,
Forged in the fires of hell and heaven,
   Fear that puts out the eye of light:
And the feet soiled and scarred and pale
Are pierced with falsehood for a nail.

And priests against the mouth divine
   Push their sponge full of poison yet
And bitter blood for myrrh and wine,
   And on the same reed is it set
Wherewith before they buffeted
The people’s disanointed head.

O sacred head, O desecrate,
   O labour-wounded feet and hands,
O blood poured forth in pledge to fate
   Of nameless lives in divers lands,
O slain and spent and sacrificed
People, the grey-grown speechless Christ!

Is there a gospel in the red
   Old witness of thy wide-mouthed wounds?
From thy blind stricken tongueless head
   What desolate evangel sounds
A hopeless note of hope deferred?
What word, if there be any word?

O son of man, beneath man’s feet
   Cast down, O common face of man
Whereon all blows and buffets meet,
   O royal, O republican
Face of the people bruised and dumb
And longing till thy kingdom come!

The soldiers and the high priests part
   Thy vesture:  all thy days are priced,
And all the nights that eat thine heart.
   And that one seamless coat of Christ,
The freedom of the natural soul,
They cast their lots for to keep whole.

No fragment of it save the name
   They leave thee for a crown of scorns
Wherewith to mock thy naked shame
   And forehead bitten through with thorns
And, marked with sanguine sweat and tears,
The stripes of eighteen hundred years

And we seek yet if God or man
   Can loosen thee as Lazarus,
Bid thee rise up republican
   And save thyself and all of us;
But no disciple’s tongue can say
When thou shalt take our sins away.

And mouldering now and hoar with moss
   Between us and the sunlight swings
The phantom of a Christless cross
   Shadowing the sheltered heads of kings
And making with its moving shade
The souls of harmless men afraid.

It creaks and rocks to left and right
   Consumed of rottenness and rust,
Worm-eaten of the worms of night,
   Dead as their spirits who put trust,
Round its base muttering as they sit,
In the time-cankered name of it.

Thou, in the day that breaks thy prison,
   People, though these men take thy name,
And hail and hymn thee rearisen,
   Who made songs erewhile of thy shame,
Give thou not ear; for these are they
Whose good day was thine evil day.

Set not thine hand unto their cross.
   Give not thy soul up sacrificed.
Change not the gold of faith for dross
   Of Christian creeds that spit on Christ.
Let not thy tree of freedom be
Regrafted from that rotting tree.

This dead God here against my face
   Hath help for no man; who hath seen
The good works of it, or such grace
   As thy grace in it, Nazarene,
As that from thy live lips which ran
For man’s sake, O thou son of man?

The tree of faith ingraffed by priests
   Puts its foul foliage out above thee,
And round it feed man-eating beasts
   Because of whom we dare not love thee;
Though hearts reach back and memories ache,
We cannot praise thee for their sake.

O hidden face of man, whereover
   The years have woven a viewless veil,
If thou wast verily man’s lover,
   What did thy love or blood avail?
Thy blood the priests make poison of,
And in gold shekels coin thy love.

So when our souls look back to thee
   They sicken, seeing against thy side,
Too foul to speak of or to see,
   The leprous likeness of a bride,
Whose kissing lips through his lips grown
Leave their God rotten to the bone.

When we would see thee man, and know
   What heart thou hadst toward men indeed,
Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo,
   The lips of priests that pray and feed
While their own hell’s worm curls and licks
The poison of the crucifix.

Thou bad’st let children come to thee;
   What children now but curses come?
What manhood in that God can be
   Who sees their worship, and is dumb?
No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died,
Is this their carrion crucified.

Nay, if their God and thou be one,
   If thou and this thing be the same,
Thou shouldst not look upon the sun;
   The sun grows haggard at thy name.
Come down, be done with, cease, give o’er;
Hide thyself, strive not, be no more.

Poetry of Atheism

In this spot I will share some of my favourite atheist (or otherwise unorthodox) poetry.

Please feel free to leave any type of comment, whether positive or negative; whether to give useful advice or to commend my spirit to Hell. At this early stage I’m open to any interested reader…

For the inaugural posting I thought I’d share a few stanzas from the French atheist poet Sylvain Marechal, who wrote these lines in the late 1700s, but didn’t publish them during his lifetime.

From “Fragments from a Philosophical Poem” (my own (sloppy, metre-less) translation), the first of 40 or so fragments…

 

FRAGMENT 1

“World, who made you?  Who lit up the sun?

“Whom do you owe your life to, Man? Who made everyone?

“Does the universe have only chance for its Lord?

“Chance is just a word…”

     But what is God–something more?

Nothing is unborn; nothing dies not; everything is chained,

All of it to a game of change,

By turns, material otherwise wrought,

Vegetates inside plants, but in Man forms his thoughts:

Everything gets dressed up, puts on, in the same object,

You find, at the same time a principle, an effect:

By its own influence, nature works on it,

And ever takes new forms as fit:

The elements, friends and rivals at once,

Tend to the same goals by contrary laws.

To contain order, or see war in its power;

On Earth, the attack and defense is observed

Perfect balance and of good and crime;

And life and death, all is of equal esteem.

The weak is always the victim of the strong:

Thus, as always, the universe goes along.

     Within a dark dilemma, this professor of no consequence

Comes to me to talk of a God, of a Being of Intelligence,

Who made all for the best, Master of all that is.

“There is no doubt: a First Cause exists;

“Everything says, There is a God; everything on the Earth and up over;

“Of the seasons and days the miraculous order

“Of opposite creatures, astonishing accord;

“Of the plan that rules all, the infinite word.

“Go from one pole to the other and from the mountainous mists,

“Descend, hardy mortal, to the profound abyss;

“Everything shows our eyes, shouts with a voice of thunder,

“That there is a God, author of all these wonders.”

 

If God exists, everything should attest it:

If God exists, could anyone doubt it? 

Has geometry ever had an heretic?

Does a reckoner need a stick,

To prove that a triangle always has three sides?

Or that two plus two are four? Besides,
If a God existed, everything would be well, without doubt:
Next to Good is Evil; but crowding in upon my route,
The fears, the boredoms, under a thousand aspects diverse,
Make me a prison for me out of this beautiful universe.
What! below the gaze of a God, vice is ennobled again,
And the wise man, meanwhile, vegetates, forgotten!
The generous transports of proud patriotism,
Give place to the cold calculations of sterile egoism!
See how, below the gaze of God, everywhere self-interest reigns,
And modest virtue invites a disgusted glance!
If God exists, as confessed by Socrates,
Such a God should have saved him from his ungrateful country…
If God existed, would Nero have been born?
………
If God existed, would so many fanatic cases,
These charlatans in our public places,
Would they in His name sell their magic rings,
Smothering Reason beneath their reasonings,
Fooling the good faith of the all too gullible mob,

And seeing it tremble at their feet beneath their rod?

If God were, the people without error

Of a universal worship would render Him honours,

And beside the same altar, always from intellect,

Would praise His power and bless His goodness.

If a God existed, would the opulent guilty man

Dare to fix an insolent glance

Upon the righteous, oppressed man, the wise man who, instead of arms,

Has but his own tears, innocence and his heart? 

In vain should I be opposed by the laws of the world that’s to come:
Why permit a crime? Just to punish someone?
Should God be pleased to count victims?
He should be great enough to prevent crimes: 
Whatever may come, on this terrestrial clod,
Miserable virtue attests against a God.

(Original is online at: http://gallica.bnf.fr/)