Our Profession and Other Poems | Page 5

aspired
Shall be won by self-reliance.
INTEREST.
Who has not seen the inert mind,
Bowed down and sore oppressed,

Start into life, and vigor find
At touch of interest
Some sympathetic
soul has shown,
By look in kindness given,
Or word whose accent,
cadence, tone,
Gave joy akin to heaven?
No emanation from the heart
Has greater power to win,
Than that
which lays aside all art
And quietly steps in
To soothe through
sympathy, the cares
And sorrows, one by one,
Of timorous soul
who scarcely dares
Go forward all alone,
But needs some word of magic power
To give him life and zest,

Some animating heart-given dower
Whose wealth is interest.
Few,
few there are who know the force
That dormant lies in many a brain,

Who trace inertia to its source
Or see how mind o'er mind may
reign.
MEMORY AND REASON.
Who stores the mind with richest truth
Gathered from sages of all
lands,
May toil through days of sunny youth,
And on till Death
gives his commands,
But fails to call to him the aid
Of Reason,
Judgment, and Good Sense,
Will find himself at last dismayed
At
smallness of his consequence.
The choicest gems must polish bear,
And metals must be purged from
earth,
Before a lustre they can wear
That tells of their intrinsic
worth.
The brain requires friction of thought,
Obtained through

contact with the world,
With which may skillfully be wrought
The
mental gems research unfurled.
Who builds alone on Memory
Will find he lacks a needed force
To
fire and set the spirit free,
And move him onward in the course
That
tends to lead him by a way
Whose goal is sure, complete success,

But wanting such, can but display
Chaotic mass of nothingness.
Let Memory and Reason wed,
Their product then may fully know

The food on which great minds are fed,
The founts from which great
actions flow;
Each holds its share of honored meed,
But each
requires the other's aid
To stimulate the urgent need
By which great
genius is displayed.

Many a brave resolution
Is formed on New Year's Day
To
annihilate some vices
That on our morals prey;
But before the year
is ended
They go so far astray
We find our lives are pursuing
The
old, accustomed way.
THE DESIRABLE UNDEFINED.
I have often thought there's a power
Unknown to science or art,

That opens and closes the portals
That lead to the human heart.
I have learned there's a secret something
That remains yet undefined,

That touches the springs and pulleys
That open the human mind.
I have watched the glow of faces,
As a light from this occult source

Has touched some inert nature
With an energizing force.
The effect was so magnetic,
It seemed like creative skill
From the
hand of the Great Master,
To give passive being _will_.
Sometimes its power seemed but presence,
Sometimes, a soft, mild

tone,
Sometimes, a look of decision,
Ofttimes, from a source
unknown.
There's a something wrapped in th' nature
Of those most adapted to
teach
That charms and holds the attention
Of those whom its
powers reach.
There's a sound from some vibration
Within the human voice
That
arouses the latent spirit
And makes the soul rejoice.
Its tone has a magic power
Whereby the heart is impressed
With the
weight of its noble mission
And unselfish interest.
There's a mystic charm most winsome
In th' glance of a speaking eye

Whose light shines in dark recesses
And explores them in passing
by.
It illumines the page of the student
As his soul warms by its fire,

And stirs him to greater action,
And lifts aspirations higher.
Every word and look and action
Has weight on trustful youth,
That
needs no sage to interpret
Or explain its vital truth.
They are fully comprehended
Through the instinct, every one,
And
need no labored searching
In a massive lexicon.
Some call this power attraction,
Some term it affinity,
But all
recognize its existence
And wonderful potency.
There's also a power of repulsion
That breathes with abated breath,

Whose presence is best betokened
By ominous signs of death.
No word has an inspiration,
No look has a sign of cheer,
Each act
reveals that a burden
Must be borne in sorrow and fear.
The wrecks that are made by its presence
Have filled almshouses and

jails
With the deepest of lamentations,
The saddest of human wails.
A selfish, terrible monster
That drives away honor and truth
Is the
cold-blooded fiend Repulsion,
The destroyer of tender youth.
The sea in its frenzy and fury,
When lashed by the wintry gales

Casts on the rocks its vessels
Bereft of their spars and sails;
The path of the fierce tornado,
Overstrewn with wild debris
Of
fallen habitations
And uprooted forest tree;
The wreck of a world of matter
That transforms revolving spheres,

Which have gathered all their greatness
Through the lapse of a
million years;
The snow-clad mountain terror--
The fearful avalanche--
Whose
thunders are heard in valleys
Where imploring faces blanch;
The mouth of a raging Etna
With its stifling breath of fire,
Wherein
the pride of a city
In a moment may expire;
The trembling of the mountains
When an earthquake passes by,

And the terror of the people
Struck dumb in their agony;
The rage of a foaming torrent,
After the bursting cloud
Has poured
its liquid fury
In destruction wild and loud;
Are but the potent protests
Of Nature's elements
Against some ill
arrangement
That brings them discontents.
But these in separate actions,
Or in forces all combined,
Leave not