Each in His Own Tongue

A 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 cornfileds,

And the wild geese sailing high --

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the golden-rod --

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 pathway plod, --

Some call it Consecration,

And others call it God.

William Herbert Carruth

Ghosts of Dreams

WE are all of us dreamers of dreams,

On visions our childhood is fed;

And the heart of a child is unhaunted, it seems,

By ghosts of dreams that are dead.

From childhood to youth's but a span,

And the years of our life are soon sped;

But the youth is no longer a youth, but a man,

When the first of his dreams is dead.

'Tis a cup of wormwood and gall,

When the doom of a great man is said;

And the best of a man is under a pall

When the best of his dreams is dead.

He may live on by compact and plan

When the fine bloom of living is shed,

But God pity the little that's left of a man

When most of his dreams are dead.

Let him show a brave face if he can;

Let him woo fame and fortune instead;

Yet there's not much to do, but to bury a man

When the last of his dreams is dead.

William Herbert Carruth

Tescott

SOMEWHERE out West there lies a sloping plain

That looks across the winding river track

A mile away to northward, bluish-black

With elm and cottonwood, then up again

Rises to meet the distant sky. Green grain

And greener grass in spring; if fall wheat stack

And pink brown prairie grass, stock at the rack,

And marvels of sky this landscape doth contain.

Here was my dear one born and passed her days,

Familiar with each bird and flower and tree,

Light-hearted, supple-thewed, a boy in ways,

Knew nature, music, books, but knew not me.

How beautiful her youth! yet I confess,

The memory breeds in me strange loneliness.

William Herbert Carruth

John Brown

HAD he been made of such poor clay as we,

Who, when we feel a little fire aglow

'Gainst wrong within us, dare not let it grow,

But crouch and hide it, lest the scorner see

And sneer, yet bask our self-complacency

In that faint warmth -- had he been fashioned so,

The nation n'er had come to that birth-throe

That gave the world a new humanity.

He was no vain professor of the word --

His life a mockery of the creed; -- he made

No discount on the Golden Rule, but heard

Above the Senate's brawls and din of trade

Ever the clank of chains, until he stirred

The nation's heart on that immortal raid.

William Herbert Carruth