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An evil environment worsened evil souls: All things were conscious there and all perverse.

 For terrible agencies the Spirit allows And there are subtle and enormous Powers That shield themselves with the covering Ignorance.

Opposing in the heart the eternal Will, They veil the occult uplifting Harmonist. His wisdom's oracles are made our bonds; The doors of God they have locked with keys of creed And shut out by the Law his tireless Grace.

There in the heart of vain phenomenon, In an enormous action's writhen core He saw a Shape illimitable and vague Sitting on Death who swallows all things born.

As a sea nears a victim bound and still, The approach alarmed his mind for ever dumb Of an implacable eternity Of pain inhuman and intolerable.

In street and house, in councils and in courts Beings he met who looked like living men And climbed in speech upon high wings of thought But harboured all that is subhuman, vile And lower than the lowest reptile's crawl.

A new aesthesis of Inferno's art That trained the mind to love what the soul hates, Imposed allegiance on the quivering nerves And forced the unwilling body to vibrate.

A capital was there without a State: It had no ruler, only groups that strove. He saw a city of ancient Ignorance Founded upon a soil that knew not Light.