Yet it may be, lord and father, could we know it, We that love thee for our darkness shall have light More than ever prophet hailed of old or poet Standing crowned and robed and sovereign in thy sight. To the likeness of one God their dreams enthralled thee, Who wast greater than all Gods that waned and grew; Son of God the shining son of Time they called thee, Who wast older, O our father, than they knew. For no thought of man made Gods to love or honour Ere the song within the silent soul began, Nor might earth in dream or deed take heaven upon her Till the word was clothed with speech by lips of man. And the word and the life wast thou, The spirit of man and the breath; And before thee the Gods that bow Take life at thine hands and death. For these are as ghosts that wane, That are gone in an age or twain; Harsh, merciful, passionate, pure, They perish, but thou shalt endure; Be their flight with the swan or the swallow, They pass as the flight of a year. O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, Destroyer and healer, hear! Thou the word, the light, the life, the breath, the glory, Strong to help and heal, to lighten and to slay, Thine is all the song of man, the world's whole story; Not of morning and of evening is thy day. Old and younger Gods are buried or begotten From uprising to downsetting of thy sun, Risen from eastward, fallen to westward and forgotten, And their springs are many, but their end is one. Divers births of godheads find one death appointed, As the soul whence each was born makes room for each; God by God goes out, discrowned and disanointed, But the soul stands fast that gave them shape and speech. Is the sun yet cast out of heaven? Is the song yet cast out of man? Life that had song for its leaven To quicken the blood that ran Through the veins of the songless years More bitter and cold than tears, Heaven that had thee for its one Light, life, word, witness, O sun, Are they soundless and sightless and hollow, Without eye, without speech, without ear? O father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, Destroyer and healer, hear!