Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/328

 316 moanings were lamentable with the bitterness or sullenness of despair. And my guide said: They were imprisoned and chained and lashed for their crimes by the rich who had kept them wretched and ignorant and vile; they were dungeoned or tortured by kings because they dared try to be free; they were tortured and burned alive by priests because they dared to think for themselves: they moan their frustrate lives. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we reached an enormous multitude, the soldiery of all nations, and many were mangled and mutilated, gashed and bleeding, torn and shattered; others lay as starving, others as in fever, others as devoured by frost; and those who seemed unhurt paced erect with a stolid misery in the forthright regard. And my leader said: They were torn from their kindred, they were cut off from the sweet life of home; for love they were given lust, for the ploughshare that produces, the sword that destroys; from men they were drilled into machines: for the pride of kings and nobles, for the enmities of priests, they went forth to kill or be killed by their fellows whom they knew not, against whom they had no cause of hatred, who had no cause of hatred against them; to ravage and burn and massacre; the cries of the homeless, the widows, the fatherless, are ever in their ears: they moan their worse than frustrate Hves. And we went onward continually from moaning unto moaning. And we came to a vast multitude; cowled monks and veiled nuns moaning for ever a hopeless Miserere; cadaverous ascetics, self-starved, self-lashed, self-tortured, grovelling on the earth, staring spell-bound on skulls, sobbing and weeping, supplicating with desperate despairing supplications the image of a wretched human figure nailed to a cross. And my guide said: For religion they renounced the sweetness of home, the healthful