Poems (Greenwell)/The Two Religions
THE TWO RELIGIONS.
The heart is like the World—A dreamer, yea, a Pagan in its youth; It takes its visions—being—fair for truth, And seeks no further; loving best to brood In lonely thought, it throngs its solitude With wondrous shapes, it flings upon the air Its Shadow, worshipping before that fair And floating semblance! caring but to please The noble and the beautiful, for theseIts flowery altars shine; it will not seek Communion with the baser crowd, in scorn It holds all lowly things, and for the weak It takes no thought;
Yet hath this haughty creed Been found too narrow for its scope, too cold E'en for the soil that raised it; in its need The spirit turns from it as from its old Fond faiths the Earth revolted—each hath tried And each grown weary, casts the broken chain Away, to greet a purer Worship, wide As is the world that it was made for, warm As Heaven that it was sent from; it hath place For all, it gathers in a wide embrace Things dis-esteemed, it goeth forth to seek The things that none desire; its words are meek Yet eloquent; it loveth in the shade Of inner calm to muse, yet will not shun The Many, looking in the face of One Divine, yet like unto His brethren made!