THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought
Fall from him at the touch of life,
His old gods fail him in the strife--
Withdrawn, the heavens he sought!
Vanished, the miracles that led,
The cloud at noon, the flame at night;
The vision that he wing'd and sped
Falls backward, baffled, from the height;
Yet in the wreck of these he stands
Upheld by something grim and strong;
Some stubborn instinct lifts a song
And nerves him, heart and hands:
He does not dare to call it hope;--
It is not aught that seeks reward--
Nor faith, that up some sunward slope
Runs aureoled to meet its lord;
It touches something elder far
Than faith or creed or thought in man,
It was ere yet these lived and ran
Like light from star to star;
It touches that stark, primal need
That from unpeopled voids and vast
Fashioned the first crude, childish creed,--
And still shall fashion, till the last!
For one word is the tale of men:
They fling their icons to the sod,
And having trampled down a god
They seek a god again!
Stripped of his creeds inherited,
Bereft of all his sires held true,
Amid the wreck of visions dead
He thrills at touch of visions new. . . .
He wings another Dream for flight. . . .
He seeks beyond the outmost dawn
A god he set there . . . and, anon,
Drags that god from the height!
. . . . . .
But aye from ruined faiths and old
That droop and die, fall bruised seeds;
And when new flowers and faiths unfold
They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier creeds.
