My Childhood God



When I was small the Lord appeared
         Unto my mental eye
A gentle giant with a beard
         Who homed up in the sky.
But soon that vasty vision blurred,
         And faded in the end,
Till God is just another word
         I cannot comprehend.
         
I envy those of simple faith
         Who bend the votive knee;
Who do not doubt divinely death
         Will set their spirits free.
Oh could I be like you and you,
         Sweet souls who scan this line,
And by dim altar worship too
         A Deity Divine!

Alas! Mid passions that appal
         I ask with bitter woe
Is God responsible for all
         Our horror here below?
He made the hero and the saint,
         But did He also make
The cannibal in battle paint,
         The shark and rattlesnake?

If I believe in God I should
         Believe in Satan too;
The one the source of all our good,
         The other of our rue . . .
Oh could I second childhood gain!
         For then it might be, I
Once more would see that vision plain,--
         Fond Father in the sky.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

53 sec read
35

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCD XEXEFGFG HXHHIJIJ KFKFLBLB
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,019
Words 179
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8

Robert William Service

Robert William Service was a poet and writer sometimes referred to as the Bard of the Yukon He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North including the poems The Shooting of Dan McGrew The Law of the Yukon and The Cremation of Sam McGee His writing was so expressive that his readers took him for a hard-bitten old Klondike prospector not the later-arriving bank clerk he actually was Robert William Service was born 16 January 1874 in Preston England but also lived in Scotland before emigrating to Canada in 1894 Service went to the Yukon Territory in 1904 as a bank clerk and became famous for his poems about this region which are mostly in his first two books of poetry He wrote quite a bit of prose as well and worked as a reporter for some time but those writings are not nearly as well known as his poems He travelled around the world quite a bit and narrowly escaped from France at the beginning of the Second World War during which time he lived in Hollywood California He died 11 September 1958 in France Incidentally he played himself in a movie called The Spoilers starring John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich more…

All Robert William Service poems | Robert William Service Books

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