Poems of Power | Page 2

and near.?Flaunting the flag of Unbelief, with Greed?For pilot, lo! the pirate age in speed?Bears on to ruin. War's most hideous crimes?Besmirch the record of these modern times.?Degenerate is the world I leave to you, -?My happiest speech to earth will be--adieu.
THE NEW CENTURY
You speak as one too weary to be just.?I hear the guns--I see the greed and lust.?The death throes of a giant evil fill?The air with riot and confusion. Ill?Ofttimes makes fallow ground for Good; and Wrong?Builds Right's foundation, when it grows too strong.?Pregnant with promise is the hour, and grand?The trust you leave in my all-willing hand.
THE OLD CENTURY
As one who throws a flickering taper's ray?To light departing feet, my shadowed way?You brighten with your faith. Faith makes the man?Alas, that my poor foolish age outran?Its early trust in God! The death of art?And progress follows, when the world's hard heart?Casts out religion. 'Tis the human brain?Men worship now, and heaven, to them, means--gain.
THE NEW CENTURY
Faith is not dead, tho' priest and creed may pass,?For thought has leavened the whole unthinking mass,?And man looks now to find the God within.?We shall talk more of love, and less of sin,?In this new era. We are drawing near?Unatlassed boundaries of a larger sphere.?With awe, I wait, till Science leads us on,?Into the full effulgence of its dawn.
DEATH HAS CROWNED HIM A MARTYR?(Written on the day of President McKinley's death)
In the midst of sunny waters, lo! the mighty Ship of State?Staggers, bruised and torn and wounded by a derelict of fate, One that drifted from its moorings in the anchorage of hate.
On the deck our noble Pilot, in the glory of his prime,?Lies in woe-impelling silence, dead before his hour or time, Victim of a mind self-centred in a Godless fool of crime.
One of earth's dissension-breeders, one of Hate's unreasoning tools, In the annals of the ages, when the world's hot anger cools, He who sought for Crime's distinction shall be known as Chief of Fools.
In the annals of the ages, he who had no thought of fame?(Keeping on the path of duty, caring not for praise or blame), Close beside the deathless Lincoln, writ in light, will shine his name.
Youth proclaimed him as a hero; time, a statesman; love, a man; Death has crowned him as a martyr,--so from goal to goal he ran, Knowing all the sum of glory that a human life may span.
He was chosen by the people; not an accident of birth?Made him ruler of a nation, but his own intrinsic worth.?Fools may govern over kingdoms--not republics of the earth.
He has raised the lovers' standard by his loyalty and faith, He has shown how virile manhood may keep free from scandal's breath. He has gazed, with trust unshaken, in the awful eyes of Death.
In the mighty march of progress he has sought to do his best. Let his enemies be silent, as we lay him down to rest,?And may God assuage the anguish of one suffering woman's breast.
GRIEF
As the funeral train with its honoured dead
On its mournful way went sweeping,?While a sorrowful nation bowed its head
And the whole world joined in weeping,?I thought, as I looked on the solemn sight,
Of the one fond heart despairing,?And I said to myself, as in truth I might,
"How sad must be this SHARING."
To share the living with even Fame,
For a heart that is only human,?Is hard, when Glory asserts her claim
Like a bold, insistent woman;?Yet a great, grand passion can put aside
Or stay each selfish emotion,?And watch, with a pleasure that springs from pride,
Its rival--the world's devotion.
But Death should render to love its own,
And my heart bowed down and sorrowed?For the stricken woman who wept alone
While even her DEAD was borrowed;?Borrowed from her, the bride--the wife -
For the world's last martial honour,?As she sat in the gloom of her darkened life,
With her widow's grief fresh upon her.
He had shed the glory of Love and Fame
In a golden halo about her;?She had shared his triumphs and worn his name:
But, alas! he had died without her.?He had wandered in many a distant realm,
And never had left her behind him,?But now, with a spectral shape at the helm,
He had sailed where she could not find him.
It was only a thought, that came that day
In the midst of the muffled drumming?And funeral music and sad display,
That I knew was right and becoming?Only a thought as the mourning train
Moved, column after column,?Bearing the dead to the burial plain
With a reverence grand as solemn.
ILLUSION
God and I in space alone
And nobody else in view.?"And where are the people, O Lord," I said,?"The earth below, and the sky o'er head,
And the dead whom once I knew?"
"That was a dream," God smiled and said -
"A dream that seemed to be true.?There were no people, living or dead,?There was no earth, and no sky o'erhead;
There was only Myself--in