A poet's comment on today's foolishness

One of my favorite hymns, traditionally sung to the Old 124th in the Genevan Psalter. It is based on I Samuel 13:13.

Turn Back, O Man

Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is earth
And none may count her days
Yet thou, her child
Whose head is crowned with flames
Still will not hear
Thine inner God proclaim,
"Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways."

Earth might be fair
And all men glad and wise
Age after age their tragic empires rise
Built while they dream
And in that dreaming weep
Would man but wake
From out his haunted sleep
Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways.


Earth shall be fair
And all her people one
Not till that hour
Shall God's whole will be done
Now, even now
Once more from earth to sky
Peels forth in joy
Man's old undaunted cry
Earth shall be fair
And all her people one.*

-- Clifford Bax (1916)

arr. Stephen Schwartz in the soundtrack to Godspell.

* I interpret this as being one in the Spirit, not one nation or of a single mind.