The Portable Atheist

I saw a slowly-stepping train—

Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar—

Following in files across a twilit plain

A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

And by contagious throbs of thought

Or latent knowledge that within me lay

And had already stirred me, I was wrought

To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,

At first seemed man-like, and anon to change

To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,

At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

And this phantasmal variousness

Ever possessed it as they drew along:

Yet throughout all it symboled none the less

Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

Almost before I knew I bent

Towards the moving columns without a word;

They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,

Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:—

“O man-projected Figure, of late

Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?

Whence came it we were tempted to create

One whom we can no longer keep alive?

“Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,

We gave him justice as the ages rolled,

Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,

And long suffering, and mercies manifold.

“And, tricked by our own early dream

And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,

Our making soon our maker did we deem,

And what we had imagined we believed.

“Till, in Time’s stayless Stealthy swing,

Uncompromising rude reality

Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,

Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

“So, toward our myth’s oblivion,

Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope

Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,

Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

“How sweet it was in years far hied

To scan the wheels of day with trustful prayer,

To lie down liegely at the eventide

And feel a blest assurance he was there!

“And who or what shall fill his place?

Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes

For some fixed star to stimulate their pace

Towards the goal of their enterprise?”…

Some in the background then I saw,

Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,

Who chimed: “This is a counterfeit of straw,

This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”

I could not buoy their faith: and yet

Many I had known: with all I sympathized;

And though struck speechless, I did not forget

That what was mourned for, I, too, long had prized.

Still, how to hear such loss I deemed

The insistent question for each animate mind,

And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed

A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

Whereof, to lift the general night,

A certain few who stood aloof had said,

“See you upon the horizon that small light—

Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.

And they composed a crowd of whom

Some were right good, and many nigh the best…

Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloom

Mechanically I followed with the rest.