Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
III. Faith: Hope: Love: ServiceDoubt and Faith
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (18091892)Y
Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes
Are tender over drowning flies,
You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.
In many a subtle question versed,
Who touched a jarring lyre at first,
But ever strove to make it true:
At last he beat his music out.
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them: thus he came at length
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone,
As over Sinai’s peaks of old,
While Israel made their gods of gold,
Although the trumpet blew so loud.