第20章 A PLAINT TO MAN

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time, And gained percipience as you grew, And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime, Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you The unhappy need of creating me -

A form like your own--for praying to?

My virtue, power, utility, Within my maker must all abide, Since none in myself can ever be, One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet, And by none but its showman vivified.

"Such a forced device," you may say, "is meet For easing a loaded heart at whiles:

Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat Somewhere above the gloomy aisles Of this wailful world, or he could not bear The irk no local hope beguiles."

- But since I was framed in your first despair The doing without me has had no play In the minds of men when shadows scare;

And now that I dwindle day by day Beneath the deicide eyes of seers In a light that will not let me stay, And to-morrow the whole of me disappears, The truth should be told, and the fact be faced That had best been faced in earlier years:

The fact of life with dependence placed On the human heart's resource alone, In brotherhood bonded close and graced With loving-kindness fully blown, And visioned help unsought, unknown.

1909-10.