d fangs to tear thy prey?

Or art thou mix'd in Nature's source,
An ever-operating force,
Converting good to ill;
An evil principle innate,
Contending with our better fate,
And, oh! victorious still?

Howe'er it be, dispute is vain.
On all without thou hold'st thy reign,
Nor less on all within;
Each mortal passion's fierce career,
Love, hate, ambition, joy, and fear,
Thou goadest into sin.

Whene'er a sunny gleam appears,
To brighten up our vale of tears,
Thou art not distant far;
'Mid such brief solace of our lives,
Thou whett'st our very banquet-knives
To tools of death and war.

Thus, from the moment of our birth,
Long as we linger on the earth,
Thou rulest the fate of men;
Thine are the pangs of life's last hour,
And--who dare answer?--is thy power,
Dark Spirit! ended THEN?

[The worthy and learned clergyman by whom this species of
hymn has been translated desires, that, for fear of
misconception, we should warn the reader to recollect that
it is composed by a heathen, to whom the real causes of
moral and physical evil are unknown, and who views their
predominance in the system of the universe as all must view
that appalling fact who have not the benefit of the
Christian revelation. On our own part, we beg to add, that
we understand the style of the translator is more
paraphrastic than can be approved by those who are
acquainted with the singularly curious original. The
translator seems to have despaired of rendering into English
verse the flights of Oriental poetry; and, possibly, like
many learned and ingenious men, finding it impossible to
discover the sense of the original, he may have tacitly
substituted his own.]

These verses may perhaps have been the not unnatural effusion of some
half-enlightened philosopher, who, in the fabled deity, Arimanes, saw
but the prevalence of moral and physical evil; but in the ears of Sir
Kenneth of the Leopard they had a different effect, and, sung as they
were by one who had just boasted himself a descendant of demons, sounded
very like an address of worship to the arch-fiend himself. He weighed
within himself whether, on hearing such blasphemy in the very desert
where Satan had stood rebuked for demanding homage, taking an abrupt
leave of the Saracen was suf