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. |
MORE POEMS BY WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH |
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