I NEED NOT SHOUT MY FAITH. Thrice eloquent
Are quiet trees and the green listening sod.
Hushed are the stars, whose power is never spent;
The hills are mute—yet how they speak of God!
Charles Hanson Towne’s “Silence” greets guests in the Frio River Canyon as a lovely devotional poem. It offers the simple observation that God speaks through creation—trees, grass, stars, and hills.
On its own, the poem offers a gentle lesson in stillness. How easy it is to miss God’s whisper. How easy it is to fill our lives with noise that drowns out the hills as they speak of God.
But the poem grows more powerful in context. Towne published “Silence” in his 1916 collection Today and Tomorrow. It appears in the anthology immediately after six poems about World War I. In the preceding poems, he writes, “The little, simple people are they who shall go down.” “He fired a million guns—and then ten million more.” “There is a mad hound in the world today.”
So “Silence” is not sentimental. It is a witness against violence. When humanity fills the world with gunfire, slogans, and death, God’s creation remains quiet and unshaken. The grass listens. The stars are steadfast. The trees, thrice eloquent.
