THE SEEKER

THE creeds he wrought of dream and thought Fall from him at the touch of life, His old G.o.ds fail him in the strife-- Withdrawn, the heavens he sought!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 G.o.d They seek a G.o.d 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 G.o.d he set there ... and, anon, Drags that G.o.d 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.

THE AWAKENING

THE steam, the reek, the fume, of prayer Blown outward for a million years, Becomes a mist between the spheres, And waking Sentience struggles there.

Prayer still creates the boon we pray; And G.o.ds we've hoped for, from those hopes Will gain sufficient form one day And in full G.o.dhood storm the slopes Where ancient Chaos, stark and gray, Already trembles for his sway.

When that the restless worlds would fly Their wish created rapid wings, But not till aeons had pa.s.sed by With dower of many idler things; And when dumb flesh demanded speech Speech struggled to the lips at last;-- Now the unpeopled Void, and vast,

Clean to that uttermost blank beach Whereto the boldest thought may reach That voyages from the vaguest past-- (Dim realm and ultimate of s.p.a.ce)-- Is vexed and troubled, stirs and shakes, In prescience of a G.o.d that wakes, Born of man's wish to see G.o.d's face!

The endless, groping, dumb desires,-- The climbing incense thick and sweet, The lovely purpose that aspires, The wraiths of vapor wing'd and fleet That rise and run with eager feet Forth from a myriad altar fires: All these become a mist that fills The vales and chasms nebular; A shaping Soul that moves and thrills The wastes between red star and star!

A SONG OF MEN

OUT of the soil and the slime, Reeking, they climb,

Out of the muck and the mire, Rank, they aspire;

Filthy with murder and mud, Black with shed blood,

l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion and clay-- Dying, they slay;

Stirred by vague hints of a goal, Seeking a soul!

Groping through terror and night Up to the light:

Life in the dust and the clod Sensing a G.o.d;

Flushed of the glamor and gleam Caught from a dream;

Stained of the struggle and toil, Stained of the soil,

Ally of G.o.d in the end-- Helper and friend--

Hero and prophet and priest Out of the beast!

THE n.o.bLER LESSON

CHRIST was of virgin birth, and, being slain, The creedists say, He rose from death again.

Oh, futile age-long talk of death and birth!-- His life, that is the one thing wonder-worth; Not how He came, but how He lived on earth.

For if G.o.ds stoop, and with quaint jugglery Mock nature's laws, how shall that profit thee?-- The n.o.bler lesson is that mortals can Grow G.o.dlike through this baffled front of man!

AT LAST

EACH race has died and lived and fought for the "true" G.o.ds of that poor race, Unconsciously, divinest thought of each race gilding its G.o.d's face.

And every race that lives and dies shall make itself some other G.o.ds, Shall build, with mingled truth and lies, new icons from the world-old clods.

Through all the tangled creeds and dreams and shifting shibboleths men hold The false-and-true, inwoven, gleams: a matted ma.s.s of dross and gold.

Prove, then, thy G.o.ds in thine own soul; all others'

G.o.ds, for thee, are vain; Nor swerved be, struggling for the goal, by bribe of joy nor threat of pain.

As skulls grow broader, so do faiths; as old tongues die, old G.o.ds die, too,

And only ghosts of G.o.ds and wraiths may meet the backward-gazer's view.

Where, where the faiths of yesterday? Ah, whither vanished, whither gone?

Say, what Apollos drive to-day adown the flaming slopes of dawn?

Oh, does the blank past hide from view forgotten Christs, to be reborn, The future tremble where some new Messiah-Memnon sings the morn?

Of all the worlds, say any earth, like dust wind-harried to and fro, Shall give the next Prometheus birth; but say--at last--you do not know.

How should I know what dawn may gleam beyond the gates of darkness there?-- Which G.o.d of all the G.o.ds men dream? Why should I whip myself to care?

Whichever over all hath place hath shaped and made me what I am; Hath made me strong to front his face, to dare to question though he d.a.m.n.

Perhaps to cringe and cower and bring a shrine a forced and faithless faith Is far more futile than to fling your laughter in the face of Death.

For writhe or whirl in dervish rout, they are not flattered there on high, Or sham belief to hide a doubt--no G.o.ds are mine that love a lie!

Nor G.o.ds that beg belief on earth with portents that some seer foretells-- Is life itself not wonder-worth that we must cry for miracles?

Is it not strange enough we breathe? Does every- thing not G.o.d reveal?

Or must we ever weave and wreathe some creed that shall his face conceal?

Some creed of which its prophets cry it holds the secret's all-in-all: Some creed which ever bye and bye doth crumble, totter, to its fall!

Say any dream of all the dreams that drift and darkle, glint and glow, Holds most of truth within its gleams; but say --at last--you do not know.