| |
| THEY held a great prayer-service in Berlin, | |
| And augured German triumph from some words | |
| Said to be spoken by the Jewish God | |
| To Gideon, which signified that He | |
| Was staunchly partial to the Israelites. | 5 |
| The aisles were thronged; and in the royal box | |
| (I had it from a tourist who was there, | |
| Clutching her passport, anxious, like the rest,) | |
| There sat the Kaiser, looking “very sad.” | |
| And then they sang; she said it shook the heart. | 10 |
| The women sobbed; tears salted bearded lips | |
| Unheeded; and my friend looked back and saw | |
| A young girl crumple in her mother’s arms. | |
| They carried out a score of them, she said, | |
| While German hearts, through bursting German throats | 15 |
| Poured out, Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott! | |
| |
| (Yea, “Unser Gott! Our strength is Unser Gott! | |
| Not that light-minded Bon Dieu of France!”) | |
| |
| I think we all have made our God too small. | |
| There was a young man, a good while ago | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| To drown them all! The deeps of sea and air, | |
| Of old the seat of gods, no more are safe, | |
| For mines and monoplanes. The Germans, now, | |
| Can surely find and rout the God of France | |
| With Zeppelins, or some slim mother’s son | 30 |
| Of Paris, or of Tours, or Brittany, | |
| Can drop a bomb into the Feste Burg, | |
| And, having crushed the source of German strength, | |
| Die happy in his blazing monoplane. | |
| |
| Sad jesting! If there be no God at all, | 35 |
| Save in the heart of man, why, even so— | |
| Yea, all the more,—since we must make our God, | |
| Oh, let us make Him large enough for all, | |
| Or cease to prate of Him! If kings must fight, | |
| Let them fight for their glory, openly, | 40 |
| And plain men for their lands and for their homes, | |
| And heady youths, who go to see the fun, | |
| Blaspheme not God. True, maybe we might leave | |
| The God of Germany to some poor frau | |
| Who cannot go, who can but wait and mourn, | 45 |
| Except that she will teach Him to her sons— | |
| A God quite scornful of the Slavic soul, | |
| And much concerned to keep Alsace-Lorraine. | |
| They should go godless, too—the poor, benumbed, | |
| Crushed, anguished women, till their hearts can hold | 50 |
A greater Comforter!
(Yet it is hard | |
| To make Him big enough! For me, I like | |
| The English and the Germans and the French, | |
| The Russians, too; and Servians, I should think, | |
| Might well be very interesting to God. | 55 |
| But, do the best I may, my God is white, | |
| And hardly takes a nigger seriously | |
| This side of Africa. Not those, at least | |
| Who steal my wood, and of a summer night | |
| Keep me awake with shouting, where they sit | 60 |
| With monkey-like fidelity and glee | |
| Grinding through their well-oiled sausage-mill— | |
| The dead machinery of the white man’s church— | |
| Raw jungle-fervor, mixed with scraps sucked dry | |
| Of Israel’s old sublimities: not those. | 65 |
| And when they threaten us, the Higher Race, | |
| Think you, which side is God’s? Oh, let us pray | |
| Lest blood yet spurt to wash that black skin white, | |
| As now it flows because a German hates | |
| A Cossack, and an Austrian a Serb!) | 70 |
| |
| What was it that he said so long ago, | |
| The young man who outgrew the Jewish God— | |
| “Not a sparrow falleth—?” Ah, God, God, | |
| And there shall fall a million murdered men! | |
| |
