Poems of Power | Page 6

we are the soil?From which you sprang, yet sterile were that soil?Save as you planted. (Though in the Book we read?One woman bore a child with no man's aid,?We find no record of a man-child born?Without the aid of woman! Fatherhood?Is but a small achievement at the best,?While motherhood comprises heaven and hell.)?This ever-growing argument of sex?Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense.?Why waste more time in controversy, when?There is not time enough for all of love,?Our rightful occupation in this life??Why prate of our defects, of where we fail,?When just the story of our worth would need?Eternity for telling, and our best?Development comes ever through your praise,?As through our praise you reach your highest self??Oh! had you not been miser of your praise?And let our virtues be their own reward,?The old-established order of the world?Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours?For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse.?Effeminising of the male. We were?Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain.?All we have done, or wise, or otherwise,?Traced to the root, was done for love of you.?Let us taboo all vain comparisons,?And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand,?Companions, mates, and comrades evermore;?Two parts of one divinely ordained whole.
THE TRAVELLER
Reply to Rudyard Kipling's "He travels the fastest who travels alone."
Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights,?Though he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights;
For courage goes down at the set of the sun,?When the toil of the journey is all borne by one.
He speeds but to grief though full gaily he ride?Who travels alone without love at his side.
Who travels alone without lover or friend?But hurries from nothing, to naught at the end.
Though great be his winnings and high be his goal,?He is bankrupt in wisdom and beggared in soul.
Life's one gift of value to him is denied?Who travels alone without love at his side.
It is easy enough in this world to make haste?If one live for that purpose--but think of the waste;
For life is a poem to leisurely read,?And the joy of the journey lies not in its speed.
Oh! vain his achievement and petty his pride?Who travels alone without love at his side.
THE EARTH
The earth is yours and mine,
Our God's bequest.?That testament divine
Who dare contest?
Usurpers of the earth,
We claim our share.?We are of royal birth.
Beware! beware!
Unloose the hand of greed
From God's fair land,?We claim but what we need -
That, we demand.
NOW
I leave with God to-morrow's where and how,?And do concern myself but with the Now,?That little word, though half the future's length,?Well used, holds twice its meaning and its strength.
Like one blindfolded groping out his way,?I will not try to touch beyond to-day.?Since all the future is concealed from sight?I need but strive to make the next step right.
That done, the next, and so on, till I find?Perchance some day I am no longer blind,?And looking up, behold a radiant Friend?Who says, "Rest, now, for you have reached the end."
YOU AND TO-DAY
With every rising of the sun?Think of your life as just begun.
The past has shrived and buried deep?All yesterdays--there let them sleep,
Nor seek to summon back one ghost?Of that innumerable host.
Concern yourself with but to-day;?Woo it and teach it to obey
Your wish and will. Since time began?To-day has been the friend of man.
But in his blindness and his sorrow?He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.
You and to-day! a soul sublime?And the great pregnant hour of time.
With God between to bind the train,?Go forth, I say--attain--attain.
THE REASON
Do you know what moves the tides
As they swing from low to high??'Tis the love, love, love,
Of the moon within the sky.?Oh! they follow where she guides,?Do the faithful-hearted tides.
Do you know what moves the earth
Out of winter into spring??'Tis the love, love, love,
Of the sun, the mighty king.?Oh the rapture that finds birth?In the kiss of sun and earth!
Do you know what makes sweet songs
Ring for me above earth's strife??'Tis the love, love, love,
That you bring into my life,?Oh the glory of the songs?In the heart where love belongs!
MISSION
If you are sighing for a lofty work,
If great ambitions dominate your mind,?Just watch yourself and see you do not shirk
The common little ways of being kind.
If you are dreaming of a future goal,
When, crowned with glory, men shall own your power,?Be careful that you let no struggling soul
Go by unaided in the present hour.
If you are moved to pity for the earth,
And long to aid it, do not look so high,?You pass some poor, dumb creature faint with thirst -
All life is equal in the eternal eye.
If you would help to make the wrong things right,
Begin at home: there lies a lifetime's toil.?Weed your own garden fair for all men's sight,
Before you plan to till another's soil.
God chooses His own leaders in the world,
And from the rest He asks but willing hands.?As mighty mountains into