Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/276

248 And harvest; turn the blind and awful flow

Of nature! Thou Eternal dost abide

Silent forever, like the unanswering skies

That send but empty echoes to men's cries!

IV

But not in temples now man's only hope,

Nor secret ministries of king and priest

Chanting beyond dark gates that never ope

Unto the people; now no hornèd beast

Looms 'twixt the worshiper and the adored,

Nor any creature's likeness; He remains

Unknown as erst; yet Him whom we call Lord

Is worshiped in the fields as in the fanes.

We have but faith; we know not; yet He seems

More near, more human, in our passionate dreams.

V

We know not, yet the centuries in their course

Have built an image in the mind of man;

We have but faith, yet that mysterious Force

Less darkly threatens, looms a friendlier plan.

Far off the singing of the morning stars,

Yet age by age such words of light are spoken

(Like whispered messages through prison bars),

Sometimes men deem the dreadful silence broken,

And hearts that late were famished and afeared

Leap to the Voice and onward fare well cheered.

VI

Cheered for a little season, but the morrow

Brings the old heartbreak; gone is all the gain;

Tho' the bowed soul be schooled to its own sorrow,

Ah, heaven! to feel earth's heritage of pain,—