The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley :: :: University of Virginia Library

By the gold bosses drilled in thy feet,
By the stones shedding flame at thine eyes,
By the canopied weft of thy seat,
By the blood, by the censer,—arise!

Ah, lord, thou art not as the rest,
Poor idols, that falter at need:
Thou art cased up in gold to each breast
Strung over with jewel and bead.

128

Gods needy our neighbours obey,
Lean idols, whose altars are bare:
Their faces are rusted and grey,
The spider weaves over their hair.

They are needy, their brows gather gloom:
They abide in the breath of reproof,
Under fanes without colour or room,
Where the rain-drop eats into the roof.

They are cold in unlovely abodes.
They are feeble and molten with fear.
They pine for the clashing of odes.
They faint for the blood of the steer.

They dwell in dim houses and pine.
Their singers are weary to come.
The lamp flickers out in their shrine.
Their wizards are sleepy and dumb.

Thou art scanted in nought for a god.
We tend thee a house that is sweet.
Thou hast anklet and armlet, and shod
With ivory sandals thy feet.

Thy bountiful hair like a fleece,
Outflows by a fathom thy chair.
O Idol, O god, let thy peace
Descend as a rain that is fair.

O wonderful image we serve,
Uphold in thy counsel our seat;
Establish, redeemer, preserve;
Not in vain let us slay thee thy meat.

We have given thee cymbal and song,
Much praising with censer and knee,
Such scent of sweet blood for so long,
Shall no reward follow from thee?

We give, and our neighbour repays;
We lend, he restores us our loan.
Are men to be fair in their ways,
And gods to deal falsely alone?

129

Wilt thou snuff at the fat of our beeves,
And show us no token of good?
Is recompense lighter than leaves?
Is gratitude thinner than blood?

Wilt thou listen the drone of our hymn,
And glaze thy dull orbs to a stare?
Wilt thou bring us dark days for a whim,
And send us as handmaid despair?

We have done thee due worship indeed.
We have sown: is no reaping to come?
We have crawled in thy courts for our meed:
We have prayed, who had better been dumb.

We have wrestled in praise. Were it worse
To have made thee lewd mock with light words,
To have haled down thy niche with a curse,
And twisted thy feet into cords?

Ah Lord, will one kneeler remain
If worship and cursing are one?
If chaff be accounted as grain,
In the silence where all things are done?

If record be lost in the tomb?
If, after the failing of breath,
One measure, one silence, one doom,
Be borne in the strong hands of death?

If in that dim storehouse of years,
Who shall love as a lover? Who weep?
By thy seed good or evil, it bears
One fruit in the fallows of sleep.

If life, and not death, O divine,
Thou wilt bring us with choiceness of days,
We will light thee great lamps at thy shrine
And burn thee huge beeves in thy praise.