IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, AUGUST, 1896
All day within the clanging town
There sounds the press of weary feet;
All night do men and beasts go down
Into the struggle of the street.
From sun to sun, from round to round,
The reek of sweat pollutes the ground.
The clamour of discordant days
Reaches the desecrated room
Where faces wan from alien ways
Shine through the daylight to the gloom,
Where, thick with dust and shadows sown,
A heathen god lies overthrown.
His altar is a case of glass;
Strange laughter flies into his face;
From side to side before him pass
Rude voices of a younger race.
Around him, stripped of gold and flowers,
Lie gods of other creeds than ours.
He looks before him and he harks
The heathen scoffing at his shame;
Like arrows in the air he marks
The lips that trifle with his name;
And he whose worship they disown,
He smiles on them—a God of stone.
He smiles upon them, on his face
No graven majesty beguiles.
They mock his Godhead—from his place
He bends unto them and he smiles.
His favours as a garnered sheaf
Know not belief from unbelief.
He sits in silence, he who saw
The hoary homage of the East—
Before whose sovereignty of Law
There bowed, adoring, man and beast.
He sits in silence, and a God
He bows himself beneath the rod.
O God of stone! to whom the years
Rustle like leaves that drop away,
The seal upon thy forehead bears
The impress of a larger day.
No doubt that damns may bid to cease
Thine old insuperable peace.
When, blind with carnage that inflames,
We pander to the pangs of lust,
Our orgies falter, and the shames
That hold us dwindle into dust.
From gods of flesh that we have known
We turn to thee—a God of stone.
Our right hath been the right of steel,
Our litany the battle-cry;
Bound and abased beneath our heel,
Thy chosen people prostrate lie.
And where thy children came in prayer,
Our proud hosannas rend the air.