University of Virginia Library

Said Amohia, “In your heart you laugh;
You think all this is nonsense, to-e, ‘chaff;’
Nay then, O Stranger, answer in your turn,
For still, you see, the Sun
Has wellnigh half his course to run,
Of his beginning—of the birth
Of all things, Sea and Sky and Earth,
What from their Sages do the white men learn?”

Silent he scanned an instant's space
The open eyes, the candid face
Of the inquiring earnest Maid;
Then as a half-satiric smile
Twitched at the corners of his mouth, the while
Lurked in his eyes a sly malicious twinkle,
Rushed off into a wild tirade—
Not caring if his words were clear or dim,
Only obedient to the moment's whim,
Somewhat like this: for we must sprinkle
With thoughts and phrases freer and more flowery,
The ruder baldness of his simple Maori;
Or rather, quote in full the jesting rhyme
Remembered from that Student-time,
Of which some outlines he employed—
With many explanations too
'Mid interruptions not a few—
To give to her whose wonder he enjoyed,
Some notion of a World-creator new,
Or virtual Deity, which to content us—
Your orthodox Materialists—a breed
Large-swallowed for a subternatural creed—
Have (or in reason might as well have) lent us:

“There's a God they call Motion; a wonderful Being,
Omnipresent, omnipotent! thinking and seeing,
All life, birth, existences, creatures, conditions,
Of his versatile skill ever-new exhibitions,
Are but phases his phantasy, subtle or simple,
Condescends to assume; from the faintest first dimple
He indents in the vapour that veils him—beginning
As he slides to a pirouette graceful and winning,
Such a whirl of Creation, such Universe-spinning,—
To his last of developments dense or ethereal,
When as Consciousness crowned with a halo imperial,
Though but grovelling in granules and cells ganglionic
In the brain of Mankind sits the grand Histrionic!
'Tis the strangest and stoutest of creeds and convictions—
'Tis a God that defies and disdains contradictions:
His adorers, though puzzled perhaps to say whether
He is they, or they he, they are mixed so together;—
(Though himself best proclaims his own glory Protean,
When as lightning he dances with worship Judæan,
Or intones as deep thunder his own Io-Pæan)
His adorers as Deity scorn to avow him,
Yet with faculties really divinest endow him!
All the powers creative they scornfully ravish
From the old-fashioned God of the million they lavish
On this Phantom with faith unsuspecting and slavish!
Then—like virgins once flung to that Sea-dragon scaly,
At the shrine of their Pagod they immolate gaily
Aspirations Humanity feeds upon daily;
There consume, with serene suicidal devotion
Whole heart-loads of lofty and tender emotion,
All the foredawn of gold over Life's darksome Ocean.
And they vary his victims with Logic—no little;
Never spare Common Sense—not a fraction—nor tittle;
Show no mercy for Sciences moral or mental;
And for Metaphysicians—the tribe transcendental,
Would burn them to cinders—a holocaust; striving
On the ashes to keep their Divinity thriving.
For strange though it seem, this Almighty Mechanic,
Undesigning Designer of all things organic,
Comes from nowhere himself: his own Father and Mother—
Never caused though all-causing—derived from no other;
And arranges, combines for such orderly courses
His myriad myriads of multiform forces
By accident only—repulsion—attraction—
Into beautiful symmetry, uniform action;
By headlong unweeting haphazard produces
Profound adaptations to infinite uses;
And as helplessly, stolidly stumbles on wonders,
With as little intention, as others on blunders;
Deaf and dumb, and stone blind, can make eyes, ears and voices,
Till with Beauty—Light—Music—all Nature rejoices;
Nay, unconscious beforehand arrives in due season
By dint of mere going, at Thought, Sense and Reason;
With no Mind, makes all Mind—that fine consummation,
That can trace the back steps of the blind operation;
Aye can soar on the wings of sublime calculation
O'er the flaming far ramparts of star-filled Creation.
So this Fetish—this Stock-God, this Impulse unguided,
With no aim and no sense, yet success so decided,
Still manipulates Atoms by no one provided
Into Minds like vast Mountains a World overviewing;—
With no better notion of what he is doing,
Hits off Shakspeares and Newtons and Cæsars and Platos—
Than the logs on the ashes which roast your potatoes:
And the men who consider this creed satisfactory
And would smile with mild pity on Sceptics refractory,
Poor crawlers who crowd to a house with a steeple,—
Are—some of the wisest and best of our people.”