Poems of Power | Page 9

the years;?And with hearts that are numb with life's sorrows we come
To the mist-covered Station of Tears.
Still onward we pass, where the milestones, alas!
Are the tombs of our dead, to the West,?Where glitters and gleams, in the dying sunbeams,
The sweet, silent Station of Rest.
All rest is but change, and no grave can estrange
The soul from its Parent above;?And, scorning the rod, it soars back to its God,
To the limitless City of Love.
UNANSWERED PRAYERS
Like some schoolmaster, kind in being stern,?Who hears the children crying o'er their slates?And calling, "Help me, master!" yet helps not,?Since in his silence and refusal lies?Their self-development, so God abides?Unheeding many prayers. He is not deaf?To any cry sent up from earnest hearts;?He hears and strengthens when He must deny.?He sees us weeping over life's hard sums;?But should He give the key and dry our tears,?What would it profit us when school were done?And not one lesson mastered?
What a world?Were this if all our prayers were answered. Not?In famed Pandora's box were such vast ills?As lie in human hearts. Should our desires,?Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to God?And come back as events shaped to our wish,?What chaos would result!
In my fierce youth?I sighed out breath enough to move a fleet,?Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boons?Which were denied; and that denial bends?My knee to prayers of gratitude each day?Of my maturer years. Yet from those prayers?I rose alway regirded for the strife?And conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart,?That which thou pleadest for may not be given,?But in the lofty altitude where souls?Who supplicate God's grace are lifted, there?Thou shalt find help to bear thy daily lot?Which is not elsewhere found.
THANKSGIVING
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies,?For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.?We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendour,?And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling;?They hang about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.?So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,?But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.
There's not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,?And, looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past's wide measure.?But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labour near us.?We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;?Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.?But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow?Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;?The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.?And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o'er us,?And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
CONTRASTS
I see the tall church steeples -
They reach so far, so far;?But the eyes of my heart see the world's great mart?Where the starving people are.
I hear the church bells ringing?Their chimes on the morning air;?But my soul's sad ear is hurt to hear
The poor man's cry of despair.
Thicker and thicker the churches,
Nearer and nearer the sky -?But alack for their creeds while the poor man's needs
Grow deeper as years roll by!
THY SHIP
Hadst thou a ship, in whose vast hold lay stored?The priceless riches of all climes and lands,?Say, wouldst thou let it float upon the seas?Unpiloted, of fickle winds the sport,?And of wild waves and hidden rocks the prey?
Thine is that ship; and in its depths concealed?Lies all the wealth of this vast universe -?Yea, lies some part of God's omnipotence,?The legacy divine of every soul.?Thy will, O man, thy will is that great ship,?And yet behold it drifting here and there -?One moment lying motionless in port,?Then on high seas by sudden impulse flung,?Then drying on the sands, and yet again?Sent forth on idle quests to no-man's land?To carry nothing and to nothing bring;?Till, worn and fretted by the aimless strife?And buffeted by vacillating winds,?It founders on a rock, or springs a leak,?With all its unused treasures in the hold.
Go save thy ship, thou sluggard; take the wheel?And steer to knowledge, glory, and success.?Great mariners have made the pathway plain?For thee to follow; hold thou to the course?Of Concentration Channel, and all things?Shall come in answer to thy swerveless wish?As comes the needle to the magnet's call,?Or sunlight to the prisoned blade of grass?That yearns all winter for the kiss of spring.
LIFE
All in the dark we grope along,
And if we go amiss?We learn at least which path is wrong,
And there is gain in this.
We do not always win the race
By only running right;?We have to tread the mountain's base
Before we reach its height.
The Christs alone no errors