The Project Gutenberg EBook of Satan Absolved, by Wilfred Scawen Blunt

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Title: Satan Absolved

Author: Wilfred Scawen Blunt

Release Date: July 17, 2010 [EBook #33193]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SATAN ABSOLVED
A VICTORIAN MYSTERY

[Illustration]

SATAN ABSOLVED
A VICTORIAN MYSTERY

BY WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

WITH A FRONTISPIECE AFTER
GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS R.A.

LONDON AND NEW YORK
JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD
1899

DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
TO MR. HERBERT SPENCER

PREFACE

In publishing this poem, the Author feels that some apology is needed. It
deals with matters of a kind not usually treated in modern verse, and
which ask to be approached, if at all, with dignity and reverence. He
trusts that he will not be found lacking on this essential point.
Nevertheless, he cannot expect but that he may wound by his plain speaking
the feelings of those among his readers who sincerely believe that
Nineteenth Century Civilisation is synonymous with Christianity, and that
the English Race, above all those in existence, has a special mission from
Heaven to subdue and occupy the Earth. The self-complacency of the
Author's countrymen on this head is too deeply seated to be attacked
without offence. He has not, however, shrunk from so attacking, and from
insisting on the truth that the hypocrisy and all-acquiring greed of
modern England is an atrocious spectacle--one which, if there be any
justice in Heaven, must bring a curse from God, as it has surely already
made the angels weep. The destruction of beauty in the name of science,
the destruction of happiness in the name of progress, the destruction of
reverence in the name of religion, these are the pharisaic crimes of all
the white races; but there is something in the Anglo-Saxon impiety
crueller still: that it also destroys, as no other race does, for its mere
v