Back thro' the dim and silent ages;
Back thro' the tombs of buried time;
Witness the blots on history's pages;
Follow the track of my guilt and crime.
Down thro' the dismal, silent turnings—
Corridors dark of the human mind—
See there the trace of my cruel burnings
And the ghastly relics I've left behind!

See ye the ghastly and pale procession
Gliding along thro' the centuries dim;
My martyred victims; death's expression
Sits on their phantom faces grim.
Hark to their cries and shrieking,
'Tis the music of old so sweet to me—
My priests on the heretic vengeance wreaking
And I laugh again in my fiendish glee.

Millions of slaves have I bowed before me;
States and nations have owned my sway.
Their monarchs have bade their serfs adore me;
Yet, what is their glory worth today?
For I've cast my poisoning shadow o'er them,
And silently killed with my sickly breath;
And like the empires that shone before them
Their glory is lost in decay and death.

I delight in the smoke and blood of battle;
'Tis sport for me and my priestly knaves;
I goad men to fight like maddened cattle,
'Tis thus they become my blind, dumb slaves.
Wide o'er the world have I spread my pinions
Whilst tyrants ever the weak oppress.
And wealth I bring to my pious minions
Who only mock at the poor's distress.

I plunder and kill for the great God's glory;
My hands are red with the children's blood.
And the streams that have flowed from my altars gory
Would bathe the world in a crimson flood.
To my dungeon and rack has Truth been yielded;
I have aided the sword of the coward strong;
With the name of Christ and his cross I have shielded
The holy and sanctified the throne of Wrong.

I check the rippling of laughter;
I chill the sunshine of youthful love;
I awe mankind with dread hereafter
'Twixt the hell below and the heaven above;
Friendship's golden links I sever;
I shackle the soul with a weary chain;
I crush and smother each brave endeavor;
I load and fetter the human brain.

I enshroud and darken life's brief hist'ry,
Around the cradle my gloom is spread.
I clothe the grave in an awful myst'ry,
And fill the living with gruesome dread.
I guide the tongue in pious lying;
I warp the mind with the curse of prayer;
I haunt the side of the sick and dying
And, mockingly, point to my hell's red glare.

I poison the silvern stream of pleasure;
I wither the flowers of the bright to-day;
I bribe men's minds with the phantom treasure
Of the mystic realms of the far away.
I stifle the voice of inquiring Reason;
I set my signet on Thought's pale brow;
I enslave the soul thro' life's long glad season
And a prison make of the golden Now!