Lenin
Before God

All space and all that breathes bear witness; truth It is indeed; Thou art, and dost remain.

How could I know that God was or was not, Where Reasonʹs reckonings shifted hour by hour?

The peerer at planets, the counter-up of plants, Heard nothing there of Natureʹs infinite music;

To‐day I witnessing acknowledge realms That I once thought the mummery of the Church.

We, manacled in the chains of day and night! Thou, moulder of all timeʹs atoms, builder of aeons!

Let me have leave to ask this question, one Not answered by the subtleties of the schools,

That while I lived under the sky‐tentʹs roof Like a thorn rankled in my heart, and made Such chaos in my soul of all its thoughts I could not keep my tumbling words in bounds.

Oh, of what mortal race art Thou the God? Those creatures formed of dust beneath these heavens?

Europeʹs pale cheeks are Asiaʹs pantheon, And Europeʹs pantheon her glittering metals.

A blaze of art and science lights the West With darkness that no Fountain of Life dispels;

In high-reared grace, in glory and in grandeur, The towering Bank out-tops the cathedral roof;

What they call commerce is a game of dice For one, profit, for millions swooping death.

There science, philosophy, scholarship, government, Preach manʹs equality and drink menʹs blood;

Naked debauch, and want, and unemployment— Are these mean triumphs of the Frankish arts!

Denied celestial grace a nation goes No further than electricity or steam;

Death to the heart, machines stand sovereign, Engines that crush all sense of human kindness.

Yet signs are counted here and there that Fate, The chess-player, has check‐mated all their cunning.

The Tavern shakes, its warped foundations crack, The Old Men of Europe sit there numb with fear;

What twilight flush is left those faces now Is paint and powder, or lent by flask and cup.

Omnipotent, righteous, Thou; but bitter the hours, Bitter the labourerʹs chained hours in Thy world!

When shall this galley of goldʹs dominion flounder? Thy world Thy day of wrath, Lord, stands and waits.