C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

There Is No God

“THERE is no God,” the wicked saith,

“And truly it’s a blessing,

For what he might have done with us

It’s better only guessing.”

“There is no God,” a youngster thinks,

“Or really, if there may be,

He surely didn’t mean a man

Always to be a baby.”

“There is no God, or if there is,”

The tradesman thinks, “’twere funny

If he should take it ill in me

To make a little money.”

“Whether there be,” the rich man says,

“It matters very little,

For I and mine, thank somebody,

Are not in want of victual.”

Some others, also, to themselves,

Who scarce so much as doubt it,

Think there is none, when they are well,

And do not think about it.

But country folks who live beneath

The shadow of the steeple;

The parson and the parson’s wife,

And mostly married people;

Youths green and happy in first love,

So thankful for illusion;

And men caught out in what the world

Calls guilt, in first confusion;

And almost every one when age,

Disease, or sorrows strike him,—

Inclines to think there is a God,

Or something very like him.