The Gods and Their Makers.
“Want you the brand and scope of man, he is
Maker of Gods. A novice at the trade,
He made God out of winds and thunder clouds,
The unpropitious seasons, threatening moons,
And the invisible ambuscade of death.
Poor frightened babe, he worshiped with a wail,
Clutching his mother earth, and in her face
Burying his fears. Then childlike artist grown
He craved for form, and from the shapes around
Contorted fair the figure of himself,
Moulded his deities in wood and stone
Around his bed, his banquet board, his tomb
As yet a bungler, but when youth infused
Into the sap and marrow of his brain
The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed
Of gods as fair as he himself would be,
Majestic, abstract, yet with solid power
To make a goddess tremble; and behold,
Under the yearning passion of his thought
The embryonic marble sloughed its shell,
And gods of strength and beauty trod the earth,
Their foreheads high in heaven.”
—Alfred Austin.