A PLAINT TO MAN

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,

And gained percipience as you grew,

And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you

The unhappy need of creating me -

A form like your own — for praying to?

My virtue, power, utility,

Within my maker must all abide,

Since none in myself can ever be,

One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide

Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,

And by none but its showman vivified.

“Such a forced device,” you may say, “is meet

For easing a loaded heart at whiles:

Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat

Somewhere above the gloomy aisles

Of this wailful world, or he could not bear

The irk no local hope beguiles.”

- But since I was framed in your first despair

The doing without me has had no play

In the minds of men when shadows scare;

And now that I dwindle day by day

Beneath the deicide eyes of seers

In a light that will not let me stay,

And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,

The truth should be told, and the fact be faced

That had best been faced in earlier years:

The fact of life with dependence placed

On the human heart's resource alone,

In brotherhood bonded close and graced

With loving-kindness fully blown,

And visioned help unsought, unknown.