Worship

FROM my lone turret as I look aroundO'er the green meadows to the ring of blue,From slope, from summit, and from half-hid valeThe sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires,Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind,Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world,"Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware;See that it has our trade-mark! You will buyPoison instead of food across the way,The lies of -----" this or that, each several nameThe standard's blazon and the battle-cryOf some true-gospel faction, and againThe token of the Beast to all beside.And grouped round each I see a huddling crowdAlike in all things save the words they use;In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.

Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of oneAnd bow to many; Athens still would findThe shrines of all she worshipped safe withinOur tall barbarian temples, and the thronesThat crowned Olympus mighty as of old.The god of music rules the Sabbath choir;The lyric muse must leave the sacred nineTo help us please the dilettante's ear;Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leaveThe portals of the temple where we kneltAnd listened while the god of eloquence(Hermes of ancient days, but now disguisedIn sable vestments) with that other godSomnus, the son of Erebus and Nox,Fights in unequal contest for our souls;The dreadful sovereign of the under worldStill shakes his sceptre at us, and we hearThe baying of the triple-throated hound;Eros is young as ever, and as fairThe lovely Goddess born of ocean's foam.

These be thy gods, O Israel! Who is he,The one ye name and tell us that ye serve,Whom ye would call me from my lonely towerTo worship with the many-headed throng?Is it the God that walked in Eden's groveIn the cool hour to seek our guilty sire?The God who dealt with Abraham as the sonsOf that old patriarch deal with other men?The jealous God of Moses, one who feelsAn image as an insult, and is wrothWith him who made it and his child unborn?The God who plagued his people for the sinOf their adulterous king, beloved of him,--The same who offers to a chosen fewThe right to praise him in eternal songWhile a vast shrieking world of endless woeBlends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn?Is this the God ye mean, or is it heWho heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heartIs as the pitying father's to his child,Whose lesson to his children is "Forgive,"Whose plea for all, "They know not what they do"?