Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. Various
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Faithfully faithful to every trust,
Honestly honest in every deed,
Righteously righteous and justly just;
This is the whole of the good man's creed.
———
Find out what God would have you do,
And do that little well;
For what is great and what is small
'Tis only he can tell.
SERVICE
USEFULNESS, BENEVOLENCE, LABOR
WAKING
I have done at length with dreaming;
Henceforth, O thou soul of mine!
Thou must take up sword and buckler,
Waging warfare most divine.
Life is struggle, combat, victory!
Wherefore have I slumbered on
With my forces all unmarshaled,
With my weapons all undrawn?
O how many a glorious record
Had the angels of me kept
Had I done instead of doubted,
Had I warred instead of wept!
But begone, regret, bewailing!
Ye had weakened at the best;
I have tried the trusty weapons
Resting erst within my breast.
I have wakened to my duty,
To a knowledge strong and deep,
That I recked not of aforetime,
In my long inglorious sleep.
For the end of life is service,
And I felt it not before,
And I dreamed not how stupendous
Was the meaning that it bore.
In this subtle sense of being,
Newly stirred in every vein,
I can feel a throb electric—
Pleasure half allied with pain.
'Tis so sweet, and yet so awful,
So bewildering, yet brave,
To be king in every conflict
Where before I crouched a slave!
'Tis so glorious to be conscious
Of a growing power within
Stronger than the rallying forces
Of a charged and marshaled sin!
Never in those old romances
Felt I half the thrill of life
That I feel within me stirring,
Standing in this place of strife.
O those olden days of dalliance,
When I wantoned with my fate;
When I trifled with the knowledge
That had well-nigh come too late.
Yet, my soul, look not behind thee;
Thou hast work to do at last;
Let the brave toil of the present
Overarch the crumbling past.
Build thy great acts high and higher;
Build them on the conquered sod
Where thy weakness first fell bleeding,
And thy first prayer rose to God.
—Caroline Atherton Mason.
———
SMALL BEGINNINGS
A traveler through a dusty road strewed acorns on the lea;
And one took root and sprouted up, and grew into a tree.
Love sought its shade, at evening time, to breathe its early vows;
And age was pleased, in heat of noon, to bask beneath its boughs;
The dormouse loved its dangling twigs the birds sweet music bore;
It stood a glory in its place, a blessing evermore.
A little spring had lost its way amid the grass and fern,
A passing stranger scooped a well where weary men might turn;
He walled it in, and hung with care a ladle at the brink;
He thought not of the deed he did, but judged that toil might drink.
He passed again, and lo! the well, by summers never dried,
Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues, and saved a life beside.
A dreamer dropped a random thought; 'twas old, and yet 'twas new;
A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true.
It shone upon a genial mind, and lo! its light became
A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame.
The thought was small; its issue great; a watchfire on the hill,
It shed its radiance far adown, and cheers the valley still!
A nameless man, amid the crowd that thronged the daily mart,
Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the heart;
A whisper on the tumult thrown—a transitory breath—
It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul from death.
O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast!
Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the last!
—Charles Mackay.
———
THE CHOIR INVISIBLE
O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So