Confucius

“All matter hath a birth and death; ’tis made, unmade and made anew; “We choose to call the Maker ‘God’:— such is the Zâhid’s owly view.

“You changeful finite Creatures strain” (rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)* “The dizzy depths of Inf’inite Power to fathom with your foot of twine”;

* The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid.

“Poor idols of man’s heart and head with the Divine Idea to blend; “To preach as ‘Nature’s Common Course’ what any hour may shift or end.”

“How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show? “Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne’er canst know?

“How may the passing Now contain the standing Now—Eternity?— “An endless is without a was, the be and never the to-be?

“Who made your Maker? If Self-made, why fare so far to fare the worse “Sufficeth not a world of worlds, a self-made chain of universe?

“Grant an Idea, Primal Cause, the Causing Cause, why crave for more? “Why strive its depth and breadth to mete, to trace its work, its aid to ’implore?

“Unknown, Incomprehensible, whate’er you choose to call it, call; “But leave it vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical.

“Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defin’d, “What your five wits may wot ye weet; what is you please to dub ‘design’d;’

“You bring down Heav’en to vulgar Earth; your maker like yourselves you make, “You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break;

“You pray, but hath your thought e’er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be, “That begs a boon already giv’en, or craves a change of law to see?

“Say, Man, deep learnèd in the Scheme that orders mysteries sublime, “How came it this was Jesus, that was Judas from the birth of Time?

“How I the tiger, thou the lamb; again the Secret, prithee, show “Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt or Fate that drave the man, the bow?

“Man worships self: his God is Man; the struggling of the mortal mind “To form its model as ’twould be, the perfect of itself to find.

“The God became sage, priest and scribe where Nilus’ serpent made the vale; “A gloomy Brahm in glowing Ind, a neutral something cold and pale:

“Amid the high Chaldean hills a moulder of the heavenly spheres; “On Guebre steppes the Timeless-God who governs by his dual peers:

“In Hebrew tents the Lord that led His leprous slaves to fight and jar; “Yahveh,* Adon or Elohîm, the God that smites, the Man of War.