Classic Poem

Shall we turn from the mysterious dark with the pagan prayer and spell,
As wholly a hideous dream from the gloom of the gateway of Hell?
Shall we say of the wild-eyed savage who crouches with gibber and moan,
Where the dead stone god sits glaring, that the worship is dead as the stone?
Not so; for the worshipper lives, and with him the worship grew,
And the fear of his heart is deep and the prayer of his lips is true;
The worshipper lives and prays, and with him the worship began,
Though the fetish that towers be a fetish, the man that kneels is a man;
And a spark of the world-wide worship, dim kindled within him now,
Has guided the hands that fashioned and prompted the knees that bow.
Whence came that strange, mystical impulse, with the strength of true sacrifice strong,
Before symbols of earth and of heaven, before canons of right and of wrong?
Out of the deep, mysterious—we know not whence it began—
Out of the deep, all-present, from the depths of the Nature of Man.
Yon dark barbarian, crouching with the wild and abject mien,
Is, more than the sage or the prophet, the priest of the things unseen;
That groveller's wail in the darkness that rings to the silent sky
Is more than lore or gospel the proof of a life on high.
Not alone to yon graven horror the man was kneeling then;
There is more than a fancy hidden in the soul of the children of men.
Not alone to yon ghastly idol the savage prays to-day.
He prays to the presence within him that has prompted his heart to pray.