William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

The Prodigal

GOD has such a splendid way

Of launching his unchallenged yea:

Of giving sphery grapes their sheen;

Of painting trees and grasses green;

Of crooning April rains that we

May wash us in simplicity;

Of swinging little smiling moons

Beyond the reach of noisy noons;

Of storing in the honey bee

The whole of life’s epitome.

God has such a splendid way

Of tempting beauty out of clay,

And from the scattered dusts that sleep

Summoning men who laugh and weep;

And, by and by, of letting death

Draw into space our thread of breath.

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse