Chapter IV

What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed
by many a moon that waxt and waned?
What Prophet-strain be his to sing?
What hath his old Experience gained?

There is no God, no man-made God;
a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears,
ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,*
An Ishwara for one I nill,
Th almighty everlasting Good
who cannot bate th Eternal Ill:

* Buddha.

Your gods may be, what shows they are?
hear Chinas Perfect Sage declare;*
And being, what to us be they
who dwell so darkly and so far?

* Confucius.

All matter hath a birth and death;
tis made, unmade and made anew;
We choose to call the Maker God:
such is the Zâhids owly view.

You changeful finite Creatures strain
(rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)*
The dizzy depths of Infinite Power
to fathom with your foot of twine;

* The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid.

Poor idols of mans heart and head
with the Divine Idea to blend;
To preach as Natures Common Course
what any hour may shift or end.

How shall the Shown pretend to ken
aught of the Showman or the Show?
Why meanly bargain to believe,
which only means thou neer canst know?

How may the passing Now contain
the standing NowEternity?
An endless _is_ without a _was_,
the _be_ and never the _to-be?_

Who made your Maker? If Self-made,
why fare so far to fare the worse
Sufficeth not a world of worlds,
a self-made chain of universe?

Grant an Idea, Primal Cause,
the Causing Cause, why crave for more?
Why strive its depth and breadth to mete,
to trace its work, its aid to implore?

Unknown, Incomprehensible,
whateer you choose to call it, call;
But leave it vague as airy space,
dark in its darkness mystical.

Your childish fears would seek a Sire,
by the non-human God defind,
What your five wits may wot ye weet;
what _is_ you please to dub designd;

You bring down Heaven to vulgar Earth;
your maker like yourselves you make,
You quake to own a reign of Law,
you pray the Law its laws to break;

You pray, but hath your thought eer weighed
how empty vain the prayer must be,
That begs a boon already given,
or craves a change of law to see?

Say, Man, deep learnèd in the Scheme
that orders mysteries sublime,
How came it this was Jesus, that
was Judas from the birth of Time?

How I the tiger, thou the lamb;
again the Secret, prithee, show
Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt
or Fate that drave the man, the bow?

Man worships self: his God is Man;
the struggling of the mortal mind
To form its model as twould be,
the perfect of itself to find.

The God became sage, priest and scribe
where Nilus serpent made the vale;
A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind,
a neutral something cold and pale:

Amid the high Chaldean hills
a moulder of the heavenly spheres;
On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God
who governs by his dual peers:

In Hebrew tents the Lord that led
His leprous slaves to fight and jar;
Yahveh,* Adon or Elohîm,
the God that smites, the Man of War.

* Jehovah.

The lovely Gods of libertine Greece,
those fair and frail humanities
Whose homes oerlookd the Middle Sea,
where all Earths beauty cradled lies,

Neer left its blessèd bounds, nor sought
the barbarous climes of barbarous gods
Where Odin of the dreary North
oer hog and sickly mead-cup nods:

And when, at length, Great Pan is dead
uprose the loud and dolorous cry
A glamour witherd on the ground,
a splendour faded in the sky.

Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazarene came
and seized his seat beneath the sun,
The votary of the Riddle-god,
whose one is three and three is one;

Whose saddening creed of herited Sin
spilt oer the world its cold grey spell;
In every vista showed a grave,
and neath the grave the glare of Hell;

Till all Lifes Poesy sinks to prose;
romance to dull Reality fades;
Earths flush of gladness pales in gloom
and God again to man degrades.

Then the lank Arab foul with sweat,
the drainer of the camels dug,
Gorged with his leek-green lizards meat,
clad in his filthy rag and rug,

Bore his fierce Allah oer his sands
and broke, like lava-burst upon
The realms where reigned pre-Adamite Kings,
where rose the Grand Kayânian throne.*

* Kayâniof the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes.

Who now of ancient Kayomurs,
of Zâl or Rustam cares to sing,
Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes
that called the Camel-driver King?

Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw,
the sceptre of Anûshirwân,
The holy grail of high Jamshîd,
Afrâsiyabs hall?Canst tell me, man?

Gone, gone, where I and thou must go,
borne by the winnowing wings of Death,
The Horror brooding over life,
and nearer brought with every breath:

Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes,
they rose and reigned, they fought and fell,
As swells and swoons across the wold
the tinkling of the Camels bell.