Ode on a Freethinker’s Burn

Ode on a Freethinker’s Burn
(Patterned after Keat’s Ode On a Grecian Urn)

Thou shrill unvarnished bride of godliness,
Thou poster-child of faith’s thought crime,
Christian witness who must always express
A bible-tale, and bring up Jesus every time:
That grief-fringed legend you can’t escape
Of pain and death, the fabled cross
And resurrection: relived each year,
With human sin the guilty cause.
What mad pursuit? What jaws of devil gape?
What sin occasions? What hellish fear?

Lacerations bleed, but pricks of mind
Are deeper, therefore, the guilt you lay on
One sensitive to words is more unkind.
So bearer of bad tidings, begone.
Fundamental Christian you must leave.
Thy song be silenced: I don’t care
To hear of virgin birth nor mystic bliss,
Your proofless news are bad for me: I grieve
For other victims of your treacherous kiss,
You don’t bring peace, I must declare.

Ah, happy, happy thoughts! That had me shed
Your myths, and ever bid the faith adieu;
And, happy intellect unwearied,
For ever giving thoughts for ever new;
What happy freedom, unfettered love!
No more wasted days in prayer employed,
No more nights in tortured guilt
No more hell below, heaven above
The heart is light, unburdened, buoyed,
A freedom song sung with human lilt.

Why return to ancient tale of sacrifice?
To painful altar, to egregious priest?
Think thou I’m vulnerable to lies
With plastered saints and cherubs friezed?
All parables and sermons I deplore;
Each prayer and litany I reject
I’m happy with my limits human.
The altar of scientific wisdom I adore
To hardwon evolutions I genuflect
No gods gave rigor to this acumen.

O Atheist thought! Fair attitude! By breed
Of bright wit humans ever wrought,
With evidence and rigor, no ghostly need;
Churches’ psalm dost interrupt our thought
With stolid myths: be silent now!
When death comes and those worms call,
Our findings will remain, amidst your woe
Of sins and deities, and how in prayer to bow.
Reason brings truth, truth reason, -- that is all
I know on earth, and all I need to know.