What the Devil Said

It was the night time, God the Father Good,
Weary of praises, on a sudden stood
Up from His throne and leaned upon the sky,
For He had heard a sound, a little cry,
Thin as a whisper climbing up the steep.

And so he looked to where the Earth asleep
Rocked with the moon, He saw the whirling sea
Swing round the world in surgent energy,
Tangling the moonlight in its netted foam,
And nearer saw the white and fretted dome
Of the ice-capped pole spin back a larded ray
To whistling stars, bright as a wizard's day.

But these He passed with eyes intently wide,
Till closer still the mountains He espied
Squatting tremendous on the broad-backed Earth ;
Each nursing twenty rivers at a birth.
And then minutely sought He for the cry
Had climbed the slant of space so hugely high.

He found it in a ditch outside a town,
A tattered, hungry woman crouching down
By a dead Babe — so there was nought to do,
For what is done is done, and back He drew
Sad to His Heaven of ivory and gold;
And as He sat, all suddenly there rolled
From where the woman wept upon the sod
Satan's deep voice, "O, thou unhappy God!"

The Hill of Vision [1912]