Remember when I asked what poem this excerpt came from?
Scratch’d by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage.
And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;
Well, I found it today after all these years of searching. It is actually from an epic poem by Matthew Arnold called Empedocles on Etna. The bit that I read all those years ago is just a small part of the whole thing but it is a small piece of genius and sums up my feelings on religion and the reasoning behind man’s apparent need for it…
Born into life—who lists
May what is false hold dear,
And for himself make mists
Through which to see less clear;
The world is what it is, for all our dust and din.[...]
Nature, with equal mind,
Sees all her sons at play
Sees man control the wind,
The wind sweep man away;
Allows the proudly-riding and the founder’d bark.And, lastly, though of ours
No weakness spoil our lot,
Though the non-human powers
Of Nature harm us not.
The ill-deeds of other men make often our life dark.What were the wise man’s plan?
Through this sharp, toil-set life,
To fight as best he can.
And win what’s won by strife.
But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found.Scratch’d by a fall, with moans
As children of weak age
Lend life to the dumb stones
Whereon to vent their rage.
And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless ground;So, loath to suffer mute.
We, peopling the void air,
Make Gods to whom to impute
The ills we ought to bear;
With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily.Yet grant as sense long miss’d
Things that are now perceive’d,
And much may still exist
Which is not yet believ’d
Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot see;All things the world which fill
Of but one stuff are spun,
That we who rail are still,
With what we rail at, one;
Genius.