The Old Spirit of Night, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Period 19th century

The old spirit of night, of ignorance and hate,
From the nails of Jesus Christ forges a chain for man,
Changes the candid, pure child into a wizened dwarf,
Binds John Huss to the stake and More to the block,
Strikes Horace with his ferule, and, if Voltaire
And Rousseau make noise in class, he silences them.
He raps the knuckles of the astonished good Lord.
He chills the brows that dawn had warmed,
He insults heaven in woman, and denies it
In the star, in the flower, in art, in genius.
The extinguisher over eyes, the torch in fist, sullen,
Sly, pedantic, ferocious, he breathes in the smell
Of extinguished thought and of burned flesh.
He makes old Galileo kneel
On the turning earth and before the sun.
On the eye that would open he pours sleep.
He holds the human soul in his teeth, and nibbles it.
He inspires Nisard, Veuillot, Planche, Nonotte,
Leaves behind him every heart dead and frozen,
And the grass no longer grows where his ass has passed.

Victor Hugo

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