“And now at last authentic word I bring,Witnessed by every dead and living thing;Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:There is no God; no Fiend with names divineMade us and tortures us; if we must pine,It is to satiate no Being's gall.It was the dark delusion of a dream,That living Person conscious and supreme,Whom we must curse for cursing us with life;Whom we must curse because the life he gaveCould not be buried in the quiet grave,Could not be killed by poison or the knife.This little life is all we must endure,The grave's most holy peace is ever sure,We fall asleep and never wake again;Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh,Whose elements dissolve and merge afreshIn earth, air, water, plants, and other men.We finish thus; and all our wretched raceShall finish with its cycle, and give placeTo other beings with their own time-doom:Infinite aeons ere our kind began;Infinite aeons after the last manHas joined the mammoth in earth's tomb and womb.”

James Thomson

James Thomson - “And now at last authentic word I...” 1

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