University of Virginia Library


328

ATHEIST TO PANTHEIST.

No future, separate life, — such is your creed, —
But general life of which you grow a part;
A heart-beat of the universal heart;
A rose, perchance, or poor, unnoticed weed;
A fraction of the brilliance and the speed
Of starlit, gusty nights, when meteors dart
Down all the brightening wind; a pulse of Art;
A portion of man's speech, and actual deed:
And thus, absorbed in all-pervading God,
You think to live, conscious, yet knowing nought
Of all the past with pain and joyance fraught,—
An atom, where the atoms onward plod.
What you call God, I Nature name, and hence
Am Atheist; but where the difference?