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 Nog, 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"I claim the right of knowing whom I serve, Else is my service idle; He that asks My homage asks it from a reasoning soul.
To crawl is not to worship; we have learned A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee, Hanging our prayers on binges, till we ape The flexures of the many-jointed worm.
Asia has taught her Aliabs and salaams To the world's children,--we have grown to men!
We who have rolled the sphere beneath our feet To find a virgin forest, as we lay The beams of our rude temple, first of all Must frame its doorway high enough for man To pass unstooping; knowing as we do That He who shaped us last of living forms Has long enough been served by creeping things, Reptiles that left their foot-prints in the sand Of old sea-margins that have turned to stone, And men who learned their ritual; we demand To know him first, then trust him and then love When we have found him worthy of our love, Tried by our own poor hearts and not before;He must be truer than the truest friend, He must be tenderer than a woman's love, A father better than the best of sires;Kinder than she who bore us, though we sin Oftener than did the brother we are told, We-poor ill-tempered mortals-must forgive, Though seven times sinning threescore times and ten.
This is the new world's gospel: Be ye men!
