Page:A History of Freedom of Thought.djvu/215

 Infallibility, since it has become a dogma, is not more harmful than it was before. But the efforts of the Catholic Church in the years following the Council to overthrow the French Republic and to rupture the new German Empire were sufficiently disquieting. Against this was to be set the destruction of the temporal power of the Popes and the complete freedom of Italy. This event was the sunrise of Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise (which appeared in 1871), a seedplot of atheism and revolution, sown with implacable hatred of creeds and tyrants. The most wonderful poem in the volume, the Hymn of Man, was written while the Vatican Council was sitting. It is a song of triumph over the God of the priests, stricken by the doom of the Pope's temporal power. The concluding verses will show the spirit.

By thy name that in hellfire was written, and burned at the point of thy sword,

Thou art smitten, thou God, thou art smitten; thy death is upon thee, O Lord.

And the lovesong of earth as thou diest resounds through the wind of her wings—

Glory to Man in the highest! for Man is the master of things."