A Plaint To Man

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,     And gained percipience as you grew,     And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,     Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you     The unhappy need of creating me -     A form like your own for praying to?     My virtue, power, utility,     Within my maker must all abide,     Since none in myself can ever be,     One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide     Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,     And by none but its showman vivified.     "Such a forced device," you may say, "is meet     For easing a loaded heart at whiles:     Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat     Somewhere above the gloomy aisles     Of this wailful world, or he could not bear     The irk no local hope beguiles."     - But since I was framed in your first despair     The doing without me has had no play     In the minds of men when shadows scare;     And now that I dwindle day by day     Beneath the deicide eyes of seers     In a light that will not let me stay,     And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,     The truth should be told, and the fact be faced     That had best been faced in earlier years:     The fact of life with dependence placed     On the human heart's resource alone,     In brotherhood bonded close and graced     With loving-kindness fully blown,     And visioned help unsought, unknown.     1909-10.