| |
| AH! these old creeds | |
| Who can believe them to-day? | |
| Yet were brave deeds | |
| Inspired by them once, too; and they | |
| Made men of heroic mould | 5 |
| In the great fighting ages of old. | |
| |
| Is it the wounds | |
| Which science has given? or the sap | |
| On critical grounds, | |
| Which has brought about their mishap? | 10 |
| Nay, these touched not a vital spot, | |
| Though they brag of the wreck they have wrought. | |
| |
| But the spirit has risen | |
| From the hard, narrow letter which kept | |
| Men’s thoughts in a prison, | 15 |
| Where they struggled or languished or slept; | |
| And now we can soar high above | |
| All the creeds but the Credo of Love. | |
| |
| They are things of the past, | |
| Survivals, and now out of date; | 20 |
| The men were not cast | |
| In our moulds, who endured such a weight, | |
| So linked and compact: let them go, | |
| They who wore them had no room to grow. | |
| |
| All too complete, | 25 |
| They were subtly and skilfully wrought | |
| With logic neat; | |
| But they are not in touch with our thought; | |
| And they will not allow they have found | |
| Any spot where they have not sure ground. | 30 |
| |
| They are ever so far | |
| From the days we are living in now, | |
| From our work and our war, | |
| And the thoughts that are aching our brow; | |
| And yet though they be but part true, | 35 |
| Vain to patch up the old, or make new. | |
| |
| Creed-making now | |
| In these latter ages of time | |
| Would yield stuff, I trow | |
| Thin and loose as a small poet’s rhyme— | 40 |
| Tags and thrums, hints and guesses, no more | |
| With a deep, settled doubt at the core. | |
| |
| What not to believe, | |
| That now is the stage we are at; | |
| And how shall we weave | 45 |
| Any faith to live on out of that? | |
| There must go to the making of creeds | |
| Sure hearts, girded up for high deeds. | |
| |
| But ours is an age | |
| Of unmaking, taking things down: | 50 |
| For the warfare we wage | |
| We must swarm from the fortified town, | |
| And spread out to find air and room | |
| Beyond the old walls and their gloom. | |
| |
| Yet we have faith | 55 |
| In the Right and the True and the Good, | |
| And in Him whose last breath | |
| Was the prayer of a pitiful mood, | |
| Which smites the meek spirit with awe, | |
| And with Love, the true life of all Law. | 60 |
| |
