baptized as I?

"The cup I drink of does but rouse
The thirst it slakes not, like the sea;
And lo, my own baptismal brows
Must be their own Gethsemane.

"Across the paths where I must go
The shuttles of the lightning fly
From pole to pole, and strike, nor know
If Christs and kingdoms live or die.

"How wilt thou bear the worlds of fire,
The worlds of snow, or dare to mark
On each some ratlike race expire
That cannot leave its foundering bark?

"Oh, you, for whom my robes are bright,
For whom my clear eyes in the gloom
Are lamps--you who would share my flight,
Be warned in time. I know my doom.

"I shall become the painless pain,
The soundless sound, as, deaf and dumb,
The whole creation strives in vain
To sing the song that will not come.

"Till maimed and weary, burnt and blind,
I am made one with God, and feel
The tumult of the mindless mind
Torn on its own eternal wheel."

The suppliant replies that he knows from his own experience what such a
counsel means, but has found it himself to be no longer practicable.
There was a time, he says, when he found the perfect peace in kneeling
before the Christian altar, but what is the Eucharist for him who can no
longer believe in it? He still is prepared to follow the Spirit of Truth
at all costs. "For me," he says:

"For me the kneeling knees are vain,
In vain for me the sacred dew.
I will not drink that wine again
Unless with thee I drink it new.

"Give me thy wings, thy wings of steel,
And I with thee will cleave the skies,
And broken on the eternal wheel
My God may take his sacrifice."

"And yet," he says in conclusion, "Truth, to those who follow it, may at
last bring its own reward."

"Though storms may blow, though waves may roar,
It may be, ere the day is done,
Mine eyes shall turn to thine once more,
And learn that thine and his are one."

_The Veil of the Temple_ winds up, in short, with the indication that,
if both are completely thought out, the gospel of Faith is no more
irrational than the gospel of scientific negation, and that the former
can be a guide to action, whereas, if thought out completely, this is
precisely what the latter cannot be.

_The Reconstruction of Belief_ is a synthesis of the main arguments
urged or suggested in these two preceding volume