The Cry of the Alien
I'm an alien — I'm an alien to the faith my mother taught me;
I'm an alien to the God that heard my mother when she cried;
I'm a stranger to the comfort that my “Now I lay me” brought me,
To the Everlasting Arms that held my father when he died.
I was born where God was closer to His children and addressed them
With the tenderest of messages through bird and tree and bloom;
I was bred where people stretched upon the velvet sod to rest them,
Where the twilight's benediction robbed the coming night of gloom.
But I've built a wall between me and the simple life behind me;
I have coined my heart and paid it for the fickle world's applause;
Yet I think His hand would fumble through the voiceless dark and find me
If I only had the faith that made my mother what she was.
When the great world came and called me I deserted all to follow;
Never knowing, in my dazedness, I had slipped my hand from His —
Never noting, in my blindness, that the bauble fame was hollow,
That the gold of wealth was tinsel, as I since have learned it is —
No, I've spent a life-time seeking things I've spurned when I have found them;
I have fought and been rewarded in many a petty cause;
But I'd trade them all — fame, fortune and the pleasures that surround them,
For a little of the faith that made my mother what she was.