And even to-night in African forests some There are, possessed by such a blasphemy; Through branching beams thy fevered votaries come To appease their brains' distorted mask of thee. There in the glades the drums pulsate and languish, Men leap and wail to dim the victim's anguish In the sad frenzy of the sacrifice. They are slaves to thee, made mad because thou art dumb, And dumb thou lookest on them from the skies, Above their fires and dances, blood and cries. 19 So these; but otherwhere, at such an hour, In all the continents, by all the seas, Men, naming not the goddess, feel thy power, Adoring her with gentler rites than these: The thoughts of myriad hearts to thee uplifted Rise like a smoke above thine altars drifted, Perpetual incense poured before thy throne By those whom thou hast given thy secret dower, Those in whose kindred eyes thy light is known, Whom thou hast signed and sealed for thine own. 20 For thee they watch by Asian peaks remote, Where thy snows gleam above the pointing pines; Entranced on templed lakes is many a boat For thee, where clear thy dropt reflection shines; On the great seas where none but thou is tender Rising and setting, unto thee surrender All lonely hearts in lonely wandering ships; And, where their warm far-scattered islands float, Through forests many a flower-crowned maiden slips To gaze on thee, with parted burning lips. 21 O thus they do, and thus they did of old; Our hearts were never secret in thy sight; Ere our first records were thy shrine was cold That speechless eyes went seeking in the night; Beyond the compass of our dim traditions Thou knewest of men the pitiful ambitions, Their loves and their despair; within thy ken All our poor history has been unrolled; Thou hast seen all races born and die again, The climbing and the crumbling towers of men. 22 Black were the hollows of that Emperor's eyes Who paced with backward arms beyond his tents, Lone in the night, and felt above him rise The ancient conqueror's sloping, smooth, immense, Moon-pointing Pyramid's enduring courses, Heard not his sentries, nor his stamping horses, But thought of Egypt dead upon that air, Fighting with his moon-coloured memories Of vanished kings who builded, and the bare Sands in the moon before those builders were. 23