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While Prof. Carruth has written many inspirational poems which would fit with the tenor of this website, the regretable lack is that he was not a Freemason. However, his most well-known poem has on at least two occasions been extended by Masons, and so he is here given a sort of temporary honorary status, so that these verses may be collected together in one file.
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Each In His Own Tongue
A fire-mist and a planet —
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men 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 the uplands and lowland
The charm of the golden-rod —
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 plod —
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.
Carl Claudy, in one of his earliest "Old Tiler Talks," What Is Masonry? c.1921, gives his expansion on this poem:
Many men, banded together
Standing where Hiram stood;
Hand to back of the falling,
Helping in brotherhood.
Wise man, doctor, lawyer,
Poor man, man of the hod,
Many call it Masonry
And others call it God.
In the MSA book, Masonic Poems (1924) edited by Carl Claudy, his friend Roe Fulkerson, added the following inspiration:
Brethren banded together
Hand in hand for good,
Joined for mankind's uplift,
United in brotherhood.
Each of the band a builder,
Faces turned from the sod;
Some folks call it Masonry
And others call it God.