"I really perceive," he wrote in this connection, "that vanity about
which most men merely prate,--the vanity of the human or temporal life."
[Footnote: Letter to James Russell Lowell, July 2, 1844.]
It is obvious that atheism, being pure negation, is not congenial to the
poetical temper. The general rule holds that atheism can exist only
where the reason holds the imagination in bondage. It was not merely the
horrified recoil of orthodox opinion that prevented Constance Naden, the
most voluminous writer of atheistic verse in the last century, from
obtaining lasting recognition as a poet. Verse like hers, which
expresses mere denial, is not essentially more poetical than blank
paper.
One cannot make so sweeping a statement without at once recalling the
notable exception, James Thompson, B.V., the blackness of whose
atheistic creed makes up the whole substance of _The City of Dreadful
Night_. The preacher brings comfort to the tortured men in that poem,
with the words,
And now at last authentic word I bring
Witnessed by every dead and living thing;
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all:
There is no God; no fiend with name divine
Made us and tortures us; if we must pine
It is to satiate no Being's gall.
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