Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley — Read

SPIRIT: / ‘I was an infant when my mother went / To see an atheist burned. She took me there: / The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; / The multitude was gazing silently; / And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, / Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, / Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth: / The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; / His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon; / His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob / Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. / "Weep not, child! " cried my mother, "for that man / Has said, There is no God."

FAIRY: / ‘There is no God! / Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed: / Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, / His ceaseless generations tell their tale; / Let every part depending on the chain / That links it to the whole, point to the hand / That grasps its term! let every seed that falls / In silent eloquence unfold its store / Of argument; infinity within, / Infinity without, belie creation; / The exterminable spirit it contains / Is nature's only God; but human pride / Is skilful to invent most serious names / To hide its ignorance. / The name of God / Has fenced about all crime with holiness, / Himself the creature of His worshippers, / Whose names and attributes and passions change, / Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, / Even with the human dupes who build His shrines, / Still serving o'er the war-polluted world / For desolation's watchword; whether hosts / Stain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on / Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise / A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans; / Or countless partners of His power divide / His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke / Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, / Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, / Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven / In honour of His name; or, last and worst, / Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, / And priests dare babble of a God of peace, / Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, / Murdering the while, uprooting every germ / Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, / Making the earth a slaughter-house!