My Virtual Reading Room

A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where cavemen 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 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 pathway trod--
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.

(William Herbert Carruth)