ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS 297
The God We Make
T THINE: we all have made our God too small.
JL There was a Young Man, a good while ago.
Who taught that doctrine . . . but they murdered him
Because he wished to share the Jewish God
With other folk.
They are long-lived, these fierce
Old hating gods of nations ; but at last
There surely will be spilled enough of blood
To drown them all!
Sad jesting ! If there be no God at all,
Save in the heart of mans why, even so—
Yeas all the more—since we must make our God,
Oh, let us make Him large enough for all,
Or cease to prate of Him !
Yet it is hard
To make Him big enough I For me, I like
The English and the Germans and the French,
The Russians, too ; and Serbians, I should think,
Might well be very interesting to God.
What was it he said so long ago
(The Young Man who outgrew the Jewish God) ?
Not a sparrow falleih ? Ah, God, God,
And there shall fall a million murdered men !
Karle Wilson Baker
The Poplars
O9 A lush green English meadow—it's there that I would lie,
A skylark singing overhead, scarce present to the eye,
And a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.
The elm is aspiration, and death is in the yew,
And beauty dwells in every tree from Lapland to Peru ;
But there's magic in the poplars when the wind goes through.
When the wind goes through the poplars and blows them silver white,
The wonder of the universe is flashed before my sight:
I see immortal visions ; I know a god's delight.
And so I sing the poplars ; and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls, but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky,
Bernard Freeman Trotter,
about to die in France