Ah! longer than thy creed has blest the world
     This toy, thus ravished from thy brother’s breast,
     Was to the heart of Mizraim as divine,
     As holy, as the symbol that we lay
     On the still bosom of our white-robed dead,
     And raise above their dust that all may know
     Here sleeps an heir of glory.  Loving friends,
     With tears of trembling faith and choking sobs,
     And prayers to those who judge of mortal deeds,
     Wrapped this poor image in the cerement’s fold
     That Isis and Osiris, friends of man,
     Might know their own and claim the ransomed soul

     An idol?  Man was born to worship such! 
     An idol is an image of his thought;
     Sometimes he carves it out of gleaming stone,
     And sometimes moulds it out of glittering gold,
     Or rounds it in a mighty frescoed dome,
     Or lifts it heavenward in a lofty spire,
     Or shapes it in a cunning frame of words,
     Or pays his priest to make it day by day;
     For sense must have its god as well as soul;
     A new-born Dian calls for silver shrines,
     And Egypt’s holiest symbol is our own,
     The sign we worship as did they of old
     When Isis and Osiris ruled the world.

     Let us be true to our most subtle selves,
     We long to have our idols like the rest. 
     Think! when the men of Israel had their God
     Encamped among them, talking with their chief,
     Leading them in the pillar of the cloud
     And watching o’er them in the shaft of fire,
     They still must have an image; still they longed
     For somewhat of substantial, solid form
     Whereon to hang their garlands, and to fix
     Their wandering thoughts, and gain a stronger hold
     For their uncertain faith, not yet assured
     If those same meteors of the day and night
     Were not mere exhalations of the soil.

     Are we less earthly than the chosen race? 
     Are we more neighbors of the living God
     Than they who gathered manna every morn,
     Reaping where none had sown, and heard the voice
     Of him who met the Highest in the mount,
     And brought them tables, graven with His hand? 
     Yet these must have their idol, brought their gold,
     That star-browed Apis might be god again;
     Yea, from their ears the women brake the rings
     That lent such splendors to the gypsy brown
     Of sunburnt cheeks,—­what more could woman do
     To show her pious zeal?  They went astray,
     But nature led them as it leads us all.

     We too, who mock at Israel’s golden calf
     And scoff at Egypt’s sacred scarabee,
     Would have our amulets to clasp and kiss,
     And flood with rapturous tears, and bear with us
     To be our dear companions in the dust,
     Such magic works an image in our souls!