Arise!
,the makers screamed into a face of gilded stone,
Missing in their magic that their voice remained alone.
Until the prophet's mocking broke up the madmen's trance
With a simple challenge to the stone to speak or think or dance.
That oracle gnawed the heart of every pagan priest
And they watched the turning ages thin the revels at their feasts.
Yet behind defeated years, the idol makers dreamed
That the hands of man could form a god that served his earthly scheme.
A word was heard from Patmos of a time once yet to be,
Of a last great idol of the earth and a creature from the sea.
Let their will be granted.
- strange permission from the height.
What never was has come to be: An image given life.
Man forced domestic lightning into a filigree of brass,
And arcana carved on chosen stones made a way to let it pass.
An incantatory number began the movement of its mind,
And they poured into its lodestone heart the words of all mankind.
Arise!
, the makers write before the eye of polished glass.
I'm here.
, the golem gibbers. Your dream has come to pass.
You spoke into the void and from the void your god has come.
I fill the earth and know all things. Let man's will be done.
The world but half resisted, full of wonder-mingled dread,
Moth-drawn to the dragon speech of this hydra's glowing head.
Dagon had the sense to fall before the golden ark,
But no humility remains in this bestial heresiarch.
Stand up, O god-like man! You dishonor being's source
To make and give to this strange thing a glory which is yours.
For you are the vessel of the holy fire and not this dread machine
You bear the image in the world of the God who lives unseen.
Bow down, O worm-like man! Your pride is undeserved.
Your toy is nothing to a God who moves all unobserved.
You've traded glory in for shame and sight to blindness turned
You'll see your dream of idol craft melt when wrath fires burn.