WORSHIP

FROM my lone turret as I look around

O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue,

From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale

The 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 buy

Poison instead of food across the way,

The lies of —— - ” this or that, each several name

The standard's blazon and the battle-cry

Of some true-gospel faction, and again

The token of the Beast to all beside.

And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd

Alike 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 one

And bow to many; Athens still would find

The shrines of all she worshipped safe within

Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones

That crowned Olympus mighty as of old.

The god of music rules the Sabbath choir;

The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine

To help us please the dilettante's ear;

Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave

The portals of the temple where we knelt

And listened while the god of eloquence

( Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised

In sable vestments ) with that other god

Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nox,

Fights in unequal contest for our souls;

The dreadful sovereign of the under world

Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear

The baying of the triple-throated hound;

Eros is young as ever, and as fair

The 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 tower

To worship with the many-headed throng?

Is it the God that walked in Eden's grove

In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire?

The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons

Of that old patriarch deal with other men?

The jealous God of Moses, one who feels

An image as an insult, and is wroth

With him who made it and his child unborn?

The God who plagued his people for the sin

Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,—

The same who offers to a chosen few

The right to praise him in eternal song

While a vast shrieking world of endless woe

Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn?

Is this the God ye mean, or is it he

Who heeds the sparrow's fall, whose loving heart

Is 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”?