So quick to please or anger; whose sharp rods

Are storms and lightnings launched from cloven skies;

Who feast upon the shuddering victim's cries,

The smell of blood, and human sacrifice.

But ever as Man grows they grow with him;

Terrific, cruel, gentle, bright, or dim,

With eyes of dove-like mercy, hands of wrath,

Procession-like, they hover o'er his path

[25]

And, changing with the gazer, borrow light

From their rapt devotee's adoring sight.

And Ormuzd, Ashtaroth, Osiris, Baal—

Love spending gods and gods of blood and wail—

Look down upon their suppliant from the skies

With his own magnified, responsive eyes.

For Man, from want and pressing hunger freed,

Begins to feel another kind of need,

And in his shaping brain and through his eyes

Nature, awakening, sees her blue-arched skies;

The Sun, his life-begetter, isled in space;

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