Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Deadliest Sin

   There are not many sins when once we sift them.
   In actions of evolving human souls
   Striving to reach high goals
   And falling backward into dust and mire,
   Some element we find that seems to lift them
   Above our condemnation—even higher
   Into the realm of pity and compassion.
   So beauteous a thing as love itself can fashion
   A chain of sins; descending to desire,
   It wanders into dangerous paths, and leads
   To most unholy deeds,
   And light-struck, walks in madness toward the night.

   Wrong oft-times is an over-ripened right,
   A rank weed grown from some neglected flower,
   The lightning uncontrolled: flames meant for joy
   And beauty, used to ravage and destroy.
   For sins like these repentance can atone.
   There is one sin alone
   Which seems all unforgivable, because
   It springs from no temptation and no need
   And no desire, save to make sweet faith bleed,
   And to defame God’s laws.
   Oh! viler than the murderer or the thief
   Who slays the body and who robs the purse,
   Is he who strives to kill the mind’s belief
   And rob it of its hope
   Of life beyond this little pain-filled span.
   God has no curse
   Quite dark enough to punish such a man,
   Who, seeing how souls grope
   And suffer in this world of mighty losses,
   And how hearts stagger on beneath life’s crosses,
   Yet strives to rob them of their staff of faith
   And make them think dark death
   Ends all existence; think the worshipped child
   Cold in its mother’s arms is but a clod
   And has not gone to God;
   That souls united by love undefiled
   And holy can by death be torn asunder
   To meet no more.
   It must be true that under
   This earth of ours there lies a Purgatory
   For those who seek to rob grief of the glory
   That shines through hope of life immortal.  In
   Sin’s lexicon this is the vilest sin—
   Needless and cruel, ugly, gaunt and mean,
   Without one poor excuse on which to lean,
   A vandal sin, that with no hope of gain
   Finds pleasure only in another’s pain.

   God! though all other sins on earth persist,
   Strike dumb the blatant, loud-mouthed atheist.