Classic Poem

Poor idols, how they fade and fall
Their changeful fanes within!
And only niches in the wall
Tell that a shrine has been.

And " Ah, " you cry, " then Love is nought,
And Faith is lifeless grown! "
But is this seeming unfaith wrought
By changefulness alone?

We love not what our idols are;
We worship what they seem.
And if we worshipped from afar,
We still might love and dream.

A star perchance were not a star
If one could reach the skies;
A touch tells what our idols are —
And then devotion dies.

Too near the shrine; ah, woe the day
That so requites a trust!
We find our idols' feet are clay,
And hurl them to the dust.

So in its rage the ruthless blast
Spares not the fairest flowers:
The sin of the Iconoclast —
His punishment is ours.

By unlit altars groping still
His fate is thine and mine —
Better a fane that false gods fill
Than one without a shrine.