Which, deadlier than stone or brick,
Has a propensity to stick.
His oratory is like the scream 140
Of the iron-horse's frenzied steam
Which warns the world to leave wide space
For the black engine's swerveless race.
Ye men with neckcloths white, I warn you--
_Habet_ a whole haymow _in cornu_.

A Judith, there, turned Quakeress,
Sits ABBY in her modest dress,
Serving a table quietly,
As if that mild and downcast eye
Flashed never, with its scorn intense, 150
More than Medea's eloquence.
So the same force which shakes its dread
Far-blazing blocks o'er AEtna's head,
Along the wires in silence fares
And messages of commerce bears.
No nobler gift of heart and brain,
No life more white from spot or stain,
Was e'er on Freedom's altar laid
Than hers, the simple Quaker maid.

These last three (leaving in the lurch 160
Some other themes) assault the Church,
Who therefore writes them in her lists
As Satan's limbs and atheists;
For each sect has one argument
Whereby the rest to hell are sent,
Which serve them like the Graiae's tooth,
Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;--
If any _ism_ should arise,
Then look on it with constable's eyes, 169
Tie round its neck a heavy _athe-_,
And give it kittens' hydropathy.
This trick with other (useful very) tricks
Is laid to the Babylonian _meretrix_,
But 'twas in vogue before her day
Wherever priesthoods had their way,
And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb
The followers of Fi and Fum.

Well, if the world, with prudent fear
Pay God a seventh of the year,
And as a Farmer, who would pack
All his religion in one stack, 181
For this world works six days in seven
And idles on the seventh for Heaven,
Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing,
In the next world to go a-mowing
The crop of all his meeting-going;--
If the poor Church, by power enticed,
Finds none so infidel as Christ,
Quite backward reads his Gospel meek,
(As 'twere in Hebrew writ, not Greek,) 190
Fencing the gallows and the sword
With conscripts drafted from his word,
And makes one gate of Heaven so wide
That the rich orthodox might ride
Through on their camels, while the poor
Squirm through the scant, unyielding door,
Which, of the Gospel's straitest size,
Is narrower than bead-needles' eyes,
What wonder World and Church should call
The true faith atheistical? 200

Yet, after all, 'twixt you and me,
Dear Miller, I could never see
That Sin's and Error