The God Who Waits
Leslie Coulson 1889 – 1916
The old men in the olden days,
Who thought and worked in simple ways,
Believed in God and sought His praise.
They looked to God in daily need,
He shone in simple, homely deed;
They prayed to Him to raise their seed.
He sowed on mountain side and weald,
He steered the plough across the field,
He garnered in their harvest yield.
And if He gave them barren sod,
Or smote them with His lightning rod,
They yielded humbly to their God.
They searched the record of their days
To find and mend their evil ways,
Which made the wrath of God to blaze.
And if no evil they could find,
They did not say, 'Our God is blind,'
'God's will be done,' they said, resigned.
So played the old their humble part,
And lived in peace of soul and heart,
Without pretence of Reason's art.
But we have lost their simple creed
Of simple aim and simple need,
Of simple thought and simple deed.
Their creed has crumbled as their dust,
We do not yield their God as just,
Now question holds the place of trust.
Faith blossomed like the Holy Rod,
So grew the old men's faith in God.
We cannot tread the path they trod.
We were not born to anchored creed
That measures good and evil deed -
A guide to those who guidance need.
The God the old men hearkened to
We left, and in our image drew
And fashioned out a God anew.
That iron God, who still unfed,
Sits throned with lips that dribble red
Among the sacrificial dead.
Belching their flames between the bars,
Our fires sweep out like scimitars
Across the Eden of the stars.
And souls are sold and souls are bought,
And souls in hellish tortures wrought
To feed the mighty juggernaut.
The dripping wheels go roaring by
And crush and kill us where we lie
Blaspheming God with our last cry.
Man's cry to man the heaven fills;
We hear not in our marts and mills
The silent voices of the hills
The message of the breathing clay,
Calling us through the night and day
To come away, to come away!
For though old creeds, had we the will,
We cannot, lacking faith, fulfil,
The God above all creed waits still.
For still beyond the city gate,
The fallow fields eternal wait
For us to drive our furrow straight.
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:02 min read
- 94 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AAA BBB BCC DDD AAA EEE FFF BBB GGG DDD BBB HHH BII JAJ XKK LLL MMM NNN ONO PPP |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,068 |
Words | 405 |
Stanzas | 20 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
Translation
Find a translation for this poem in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"The God Who Waits" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/25674/the-god-who-waits>.
Discuss the poem The God Who Waits with the community...
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In