Satan speaks
THERE were no shadows till the worlds were made; | |
| No evil and no sin till finite souls, | |
| Imperfect thence, conditioned in free-will, | |
| Took form, projected by eternal law | |
| Through co-existent realms of time and space. | 5 |
| Naught evil, though it were the Prince of evil, | |
| Hath being in itself. For God alone | |
| Existeth in Himself, and Good, which lives | |
| As sunshine lives, born of the Parent Sun. | |
| I am the finite shadow of that Sun, | 10 |
| Opposite, not opposing, only seen | |
| Upon the nether side. | |
| No personal will am I, no influence bad | |
| Or good. I symbolize the wild and deep | |
| And unregenerated wastes of life, | 15 |
| Dark with transmitted tendencies of race | |
| And blind mischance; all crude mistakes of will— | |
| Proclivity unbalanced by due weight | |
| Of favouring circumstance; all passion blown | |
| By wandering winds; all surplusage of force | 20 |
| Piled up for use, but slipping from its base | |
| Of law and order; all undisciplined | |
| And ignorant mutiny against the wise | |
| Restraint of rules by centuries old endorsed, | |
| And proved the best so long it needs no proof;— | 25 |
| All quality o’erstrained until it cracks:— | |
| Yet but a surface crack; the Eternal Eye | |
| Sees underneath the soul’s sphere, as above, | |
| And knows the deep foundations of the world | |
| Will not be jarred or loosened by the stress | 30 |
| Of sun and wind and rain upon the crust | |
| Of upper soil. Nay, let the earthquake split | |
| The mountains into steep and splintered chasms— | |
| Down deeper than the shock the adamant | |
| Of ages stands, symbol no less divine | 35 |
| Of the eternal Law than heaven above. | |
