’Tis irrecoverable, that ancient faith, 380
Homely and wholesome, suited to the time,
With rod or candy for child-minded men: 
No theologic tube, with lens on lens
Of syllogism transparent, brings it near,—­
At best resolving some new nebula,
Or blurring some fixed-star of hope to mist. 
Science was Faith once; Faith were Science now,
Would she but lay her bow and arrows by
And arm her with the weapons of the time. 
Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought. 390
For there’s no virgin-fort but self-respect,
And Truth defensive hath lost hold on God. 
Shall we treat Him as if He were a child
That knew not his own purpose? nor dare trust
The Rock of Ages to their chemic tests,
Lest some day the all-sustaining base divine
Should fail from under us, dissolved in gas? 
The armed eye that with a glance discerns
In a dry blood-speck between ox and man
Stares helpless at this miracle called life, 400
This shaping potency behind the egg,
This circulation swift of deity,
Where suns and systems inconspicuous float
As the poor blood-disks in our mortal veins. 
Each age must worship its own thought of God,
More or less earthy, clarifying still
With subsidence continuous of the dregs;
Nor saint nor sage could fix immutably
The fluent image of the unstable Best,
Still changing in their very hands that wrought:  410
To-day’s eternal truth To-morrow proved
Frail as frost-landscapes on a window-pane. 
Meanwhile Thou smiledst, inaccessible,
At Thought’s own substance made a cage for Thought,
And Truth locked fast with her own master-key;
Nor didst Thou reck what image man might make
Of his own shadow on the flowing world;
The climbing instinct was enough for Thee. 
Or wast Thou, then, an ebbing tide that left
Strewn with dead miracle those eldest shores, 420
For men to dry, and dryly lecture on,
Thyself thenceforth incapable of flood? 
Idle who hopes with prophets to be snatched
By virtue in their mantles left below;
Shall the soul live on other men’s report,
Herself a pleasing fable of herself? 
Man cannot be God’s outlaw if he would,
Nor so abscond him in the caves of sense
But Nature stall shall search some crevice out
With messages of splendor from that Source 430
Which, dive he, soar he, baffles still and lures. 
This life were brutish did we not sometimes
Have intimation clear of wider scope,
Hints of occasion infinite, to keep
The soul alert with noble discontent
And onward yearnings of unstilled desire;
Fruitless, except we now and then divined
A mystery of Purpose, gleaming through
The secular confusions of the world,
Whose will we darkly accomplish, doing ours, 440
No man can think nor in himself perceive,
Sometimes at waking, in the street sometimes,