Poems of Power | Page 2

the blaze of light
That shines upon me from the Infinite.
Blurred is
my vision by the close approach
To unseen shores, whereon the times
encroach.
THE OLD CENTURY

Illusion, all illusion. List and hear
The Godless cannons, booming far
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