O Science! proud Iconoclast, thy way Is strewed with fragments of our reverence And love--idols with small or no pretence, Right oft, upon their pedestals to stay, The light oft intercepting of God's day, E'en in His Temple! Light too pure, intense, Which puts the eye out, dazzles the weak sense
Of mere Humanity, after its clay Shaping its images. But take thou good heed Thou dost not, in self-blindness and self-pride, Pluck down the Temple's self, and, in its stead And on its ruins, strewed far and wide, Building as not for Living but True-dead, A cenotaph for Man's lost Soul provide!