Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. Various
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to have the most direct effect on conduct.
In the language of Robert Southey, I commit these pages to the Christian public, with a sincere belief that much benefit will result to all who shall read them:
"Go forth, little book, from this my solitude;
I cast thee on the waters—go thy ways;
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The world will find thee after many days.
Be it with thee according to thy worth;
Go, little book! in faith I send thee forth."
James Mudge.
Malden, Mass.
HEROISM
CHIVALRY, NOBILITY, HONOR, TRUTH
THE INEVITABLE
I like the man who faces what he must,
With step triumphant and a heart of cheer;
Who fights the daily battle without fear;
Sees his hopes fail, yet keeps unfaltering trust
That God is God; that somehow, true and just,
His plans work out for mortals; not a tear
Is shed when fortune, which the world holds dear,
Falls from his grasp: better, with love, a crust
Than living in dishonor: envies not,
Nor loses faith in man; but does his best,
Nor ever murmurs at his humbler lot,
But, with a smile and words of hope, gives zest
To every toiler: he alone is great
Who by a life heroic conquers fate.
—Sarah Knowles Bolton.
———
DEFEATED YET TRIUMPHANT
They never fail who die
In a great cause. The block may soak their gore;
Their heads may sodden in the sun; their limbs
Be strung to city gates and castle walls;
But still their spirit walks abroad.
Though years
Elapse and others share as dark a doom,
They but augment the deep and sweeping thoughts
Which overpower all others and conduct
The world, at last, to freedom.
—George Gordon Byron.
———
A HERO GONE
He has done the work of a true man—
Crown him, honor him, love him;
Weep over him, tears of woman,
Stoop, manliest brows, above him!
For the warmest of hearts is frozen;
The freest of hands is still;
And the gap in our picked and chosen
The long years may not fill.
No duty could overtask him,
No need his will outrun:
Or ever our lips could ask him,
His hands the work had done.
He forgot his own life for others,
Himself to his neighbor lending.
Found the Lord in his suffering brothers,
And not in the clouds descending.
And he saw, ere his eye was darkened,
The sheaves of the harvest-bringing;
And knew, while his ear yet hearkened,
The voice of the reapers singing.
Never rode to the wrong's redressing
A worthier paladin.
He has heard the Master's blessing,
"Good and faithful, enter in!"
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
THE CHARGE
They outtalked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and pass'd,
Hotly charged—and sank at last.
Charge once more, then, and be dumb!
Let the victors, when they come,
When the forts of folly fall,
Find thy body by the wall!
—Matthew Arnold.
———
THE REFORMER
Before the monstrous wrong he sets him down—
One man against a stone-walled city of sin.
For centuries those walls have been abuilding;
Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glass
The flying storm and wheeling sun. No chink,
No crevice, lets the thinnest arrow in.
He fights alone, and from the cloudy ramparts
A thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him.
Let him lie down and die: what is the right,
And where is justice, in a world like this?
But by and by earth shakes herself, impatient;
And down, in one great roar of ruin, crash
Watch-tower and citadel and battlements.
When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier
Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars.
—Edward Rowland Sill.
———
LIFE AND DEATH
So he died for his faith. That is fine—
More than most of us do.
But, say, can you add to that line
That he lived for it, too?
In his death he bore witness at last
As a martyr to truth.
Did his life do the same in the past
From the days of his youth?
It is easy to die. Men have died
For