Absence of belief is like absence of light, a dark night

never relieved; it snares the unbeliever in a wild solitude,

wretched in spirit, facing a stride away the blackness

where all his ways come to dead end, where the light

he can bring to bear, his only light, is the torch of ignorance.

In that darkness his imagination is cruelly imprisoned

disabling perception; he discerns neither beginnings nor ends;

nothingness looms monstrously out of bottomless despair;

everything appears confused, ill-proportioned, futile, lost,

a chaos of particles blown by poisonous interstellar winds.

But the believer’s spirit, like his world, is consoled by light

as bright as sunlit sky, a wide-dimensioned space where time

unfolds in purposed direction; and earth displays its beauties

interlinked and opening out like petals; where all paths turn

through infinite, measured variety toward a brighter Paradise.

In that light his imagination is compassionately freed:

enabling vision of eternal spring under glistening clouds,

the spirit can surrender itself to a brief, peaceful sleep,

the heart flies like an arrow to its rest, and shining horizons

beckon to an infinite expanse of light pouring down.

Believing souls traverse that expanse to eternal life

where their dreams are vivid with memories of their past...

their traversing is itself a dream-like journey and surely

they attain their journey’s end, having so earnestly desired it

in the depths of their hearts and in their spirits battled

so mightily against errors of self hood and human arrogance.