The conscious silences of brooding woods,
Centurial shadows, cloisters of the elk:,
Yet here was sense of undefined regret,
Irreparable loss, uncertain what: 
Was all this grandeur but anachronism,
A shell divorced of its informing life,
Where the priest housed him like a hermit-crab,
An alien to that faith of elder days
That gathered round it this fair shape of stone? 330
Is old Religion but a spectre now,
Haunting the solitude of darkened minds,
Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day? 
Is there no corner safe from peeping Doubt,
Since Gutenberg made thought cosmopolite
And stretched electric threads from mind to mind? 
Nay, did Faith build this wonder? or did Fear,
That makes a fetish and misnames it God
(Blockish or metaphysic, matters not),
Contrive this coop to shut its tyrant in, 340
Appeased with playthings, that he might not harm?

I turned and saw a beldame on her knees;
With eyes astray, she told mechanic beads
Before some shrine of saintly womanhood,
Bribed intercessor with the far-off Judge: 
Such my first thought, by kindlier soon rebuked,
Pleading for whatsoever touches life
With upward impulse:  be He nowhere else,
God is in all that liberates and lifts,
In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles:  350
Blessed the natures shored on every side
With landmarks of hereditary thought! 
Thrice happy they that wander not life long
Beyond near succor of the household faith,
The guarded fold that shelters, not confines! 
Their steps find patience In familiar paths,
Printed with hope by loved feet gone before
Of parent, child, or lover, glorified
By simple magic of dividing Time. 
My lids were moistened as the woman knelt, 360
And—­was it will, or some vibration faint
Of sacred Nature, deeper than the will?—­
My heart occultly felt itself in hers,
Through mutual intercession gently leagued.

Or was it not mere sympathy of brain? 
A sweetness intellectually conceived
In simpler creeds to me impossible? 
A juggle of that pity for ourselves
In others, which puts on such pretty masks
And snares self-love with bait of charity? 370
Something of all it might be, or of none: 
Yet for a moment I was snatched away
And had the evidence of things not seen;
For one rapt moment; then it all came back,
This age that blots out life with question-marks,
This nineteenth century with its knife and glass
That make thought physical, and thrust far off
The Heaven, so neighborly with man of old,
To voids sparse-sown with alienated stars.