110. From ‘Ormuzd and Abriman’

Satan speaks

THERE were no shadows till the worlds were made;

No evil and no sin till finite souls,

Imperfect thence, conditioned in free-will,

Took form, projected by eternal law

Through co-existent realms of time and space.

Naught evil, though it were the Prince of evil,

Hath being in itself. For God alone

Existeth in Himself, and Good, which lives

As sunshine lives, born of the Parent Sun.

I am the finite shadow of that Sun,

Opposite, not opposing, only seen

Upon the nether side.

No personal will am I, no influence bad

Or good. I symbolize the wild and deep

And unregenerated wastes of life,

Dark with transmitted tendencies of race

And blind mischance; all crude mistakes of will—

Proclivity unbalanced by due weight

Of favouring circumstance; all passion blown

By wandering winds; all surplusage of force

Piled up for use, but slipping from its base

Of law and order; all undisciplined

And ignorant mutiny against the wise

Restraint of rules by centuries old endorsed,

And proved the best so long it needs no proof;—

All quality o’erstrained until it cracks:—

Yet but a surface crack; the Eternal Eye

Sees underneath the soul’s sphere, as above,

And knows the deep foundations of the world

Will not be jarred or loosened by the stress

Of sun and wind and rain upon the crust

Of upper soil. Nay, let the earthquake split

The mountains into steep and splintered chasms—

Down deeper than the shock the adamant

Of ages stands, symbol no less divine

Of the eternal Law than heaven above.