EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE

by: William Herbert Carruth (1859-1924)

      FIRE-MIST and a planet,--
      A crystal and a cell,--
      A jelly-fish and a saurian,
      And caves where the cave-men dwell;
      Then a sense of law and beauty,
      And a face turned from the clod,--
      Some call it Evolution,
      And others call it God.
       
      A haze on the far horizon,
      The infinite, tender sky,
      The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
      And the wild geese sailing high,--
      And all over the upland and lowland
      The charm of the goldenrod,--
      Some of us call it Autumn,
      And others call it God.
       
      Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
      When the moon is new and thin,
      Into our hearts high yearnings
      Come welling and surging in,--
      Come from the mystic ocean
      Whose rim no foot has trod,--
      Some of us call it longing,
      And others call it God.
       
      A picket frozen on duty,--
      A mother starved for her brood,--
      Socrates drinking the hemlock,
      And Jesus on the rood;
      And millions who, humble and nameless,
      The straight, hard pathways plod,--
      Some call it Consecration,
      And others call it God.

"Each in His Own Tongue" is reprinted from The Little Book of American Poets. Ed. Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1915.

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