Page:Poems Greenwell.djvu/231

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THE TWO RELIGIONS.


        The heart is like the World—
A dreamer, yea, a Pagan in its youth;
It takes its visions—being—fair for truth,
And seeks no further; loving best to brood
In lonely thought, it throngs its solitude
With wondrous shapes, it flings upon the air
Its Shadow, worshipping before that fair
And floating semblance! caring but to please
The noble and the beautiful, for these
Its flowery altars shine; it will not seek
Communion with the baser crowd, in scorn
It holds all lowly things, and for the weak
It takes no thought;

        Yet hath this haughty creed
Been found too narrow for its scope, too cold
E'en for the soil that raised it; in its need
The spirit turns from it as from its old
Fond faiths the Earth revolted—each hath tried
And each grown weary, casts the broken chain
Away, to greet a purer Worship, wide