THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old gods fail him in the strife--Withdrawn, the heavens he sought!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.
