See that it has our trade-mark! 
     You will buy Poison instead of food across the way,
     The lies of—­this or that, each several name
     The standard’s blazon and the battle-cry
     Of some true-gospel faction, and again
     The token of the Beast to all beside. 
     And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd
     Alike in all things save the words they use;
     In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.

     Whom do we trust and serve?  We speak of one
     And bow to many; Athens still would find
     The shrines of all she worshipped safe within
     Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones
     That crowned Olympus mighty as of old. 
     The god of music rules the Sabbath choir;
     The lyric muse must leave the sacred nine
     To help us please the dilettante’s ear;
     Plutus limps homeward with us, as we leave
     The portals of the temple where we knelt
     And listened while the god of eloquence
     (Hermes of ancient days, but now disguised
     In sable vestments) with that other god
     Somnus, the son of Erebus and Nog,
     Fights in unequal contest for our souls;
     The dreadful sovereign of the under world
     Still shakes his sceptre at us, and we hear
     The baying of the triple-throated hound;
     Eros-is young as ever, and as fair
     The lovely Goddess born of ocean’s foam.

     These be thy gods, O Israel!  Who is he,
     The one ye name and tell us that ye serve,
     Whom ye would call me from my lonely tower
     To worship with the many-headed throng? 
     Is it the God that walked in Eden’s grove
     In the cool hour to seek our guilty sire? 
     The God who dealt with Abraham as the sons
     Of that old patriarch deal with other men? 
     The jealous God of Moses, one who feels
     An image as an insult, and is wroth
     With him who made it and his child unborn? 
     The God who plagued his people for the sin
     Of their adulterous king, beloved of him,
     The same who offers to a chosen few
     The right to praise him in eternal song
     While a vast shrieking world of endless woe
     Blends its dread chorus with their rapturous hymn? 
     Is this the God ye mean, or is it he
     Who heeds the sparrow’s fall, whose loving heart
     Is as the pitying father’s to his child,
     Whose lesson to his children is, “Forgive,”
     Whose plea for all, “They know not what they do”

     I claim the right of knowing whom I serve,
     Else is my service idle; He that asks
     My homage asks it from a reasoning soul. 
     To crawl is not to worship; we have learned
     A drill of eyelids, bended neck and knee,
     Hanging our prayers on binges, till we ape
     The flexures of the many-jointed worm. 
     Asia has taught her