Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

At The Cross-Roads. — J.T.W

At The Cross-Roads.

J.T.W.

Awake my soul! And with a mind intent
To speak the Truth as thou hast found her here:
Break forth into the story of thy life,
And tell to all who will to hear the tale
How thou did'st go from simple, trusting faith
And youthful practice in the ancient Church,
Through shadowy paths of weary doubt and search,
Emerging thence found anchor in the hope
Of Man's emergence through Humanity.

* * * *

Swift flowed the stream of life through all my veins:
My heart felt glad at sight of Spring's new form.
All things seemed good, and cheerful grew my soul
Beneath the shining Orb that rules our day :
And, looking round, I felt 'twas good to live—
When, 'fore me stood a beggar—lame, diseased,
Who slowly dragged his painful shape along,
A very blot upon the living stage;
While further on, a wreck in human guise
That once rejoiced in virtue, home, and kin.
Then up before me rose in grim array
Disease and Death, the punishment of sin
Which we incur, and which involves all life,
And stands the spectre of our fearsome thoughts,
Unless by firmest faith in God's own word
We feel that life is naught; and look for death

page 4

To lead us to the better life beyond.
Man striving thus for goal he hopes to reach,
Oft rises up like some huge foam-clad wave
From out the bosom of the mighty deep,
To fall back into depths from whence he came
And but the crested foam to mark his march
Upon the ocean of devouring Time,
Unless that Mightier Power who reigns supreme
Called forth such instrument to work His will.
Now, turning to my inmost soul again,
I thought of life, and what it meant in truth
For all these millions hurried on their way
Through sordid, cheerless lives to Want and Death
By those whose part should be to love and save
The starved poor and heal the maimed and sick,
But who instead oft drive the luckless wight
To beg for leave to work and send him forth
Unfed, upon a wilderness of woe;
And this in lands where plenty fills the earth
And labour's wealth lies piled in heaps around.
Then straightway upon the piteous sight
Of wrong so strong, of right so weak in all,
This disarrangement of the Godlike power
That should teach man to see in man his brother
And God in everything he sees around—
Who'd blame me if my heart grew somewhat hard
To those who, wallowing in the wealth of greed,
Rule thousands by ambition's cruellest sway,
Make pestilences, wars, that they themselves
May reap full harvest of a yellow dross.
The stately mansion, grand equipage, noble steeds
Housed in homes the envy of the poor
Whose labour made the brick and carved the stone—
And then went home to lie in hovel foul
And sap disease from out the fœtid straw
That makes his bed in some dark corner moist
With reeking slime that, oozing through the walls,
Lays up the poison that shall yet enfold
All those who live in ease of pride and power.
And they, ye powers, who bind him down to this,
Would make it crime if he but strive to rise,
And by lame means, the only way he knows,

page 5

Ask more of that his labour brought to shape
Which else had been a huge infertile mass
Awaiting Nature's tardier path to life.
Now, straining forth for something firm to grasp
In this great mire of poverty and woe,
Methought I saw a hand stretched far and wide
Close down upon this flood of human tears,
And starting up to see from whence it came
I saw as grand a form as breathes the age.
'Twas mighty "Leo," mighty as his name!
Tho' bound by bars of man, his fleshly form
Is free as air for all his soul desires,
Whose words unfettered ever-streaming flow
From out the cage that holds the prisoned form
(But cannot quench the life that stirs within)
Which penetrates to farthest ends of earth,
And ever will as long as earth shall live
And reason hold its sway in human thought.
E'en thus solioquising as I gazed
Upon the living form of him who sits
Where sat that one in ages long gone by;
Sent forth by Him who came whence cometh all;
Who gave to Simon Peter mission thus,
"Thou art a rock" and shalt for ever stand
My living word against the tides of time;
And thus it stands, like hardest rock upreared,
Opposed to all the wavering thoughts of man,
Whose puny seas may tease its base in vain;
For all that comes from this is held divine
By those of faith, who see him as I saw.
Him standing stretching over all the earth,
That wondrous form of knowledge, teaching all
That future bliss lies not in thought of self,
Or selfish grasping to possess the earth;
But by unselfish lives enfolding all
In one encircling bond of brotherhood.
There was in substance many details bold,
With justice, making essence of the whole
Contained in this, the greatest of "Encyclicals."
Now ye of noble minds, who see herein
A task to occupy your fruitful brains,
Work on in silence, making firm your hold

page 6

On all that tends to raise the suffering man
By lessons that the past alone can teach,
For with the present lies the future base.
And as we build so shall it stand or fall.
For where decay is seated in the base
The edifice but waits the stern decree
Of Time to bring both ruin and oblivion.
That which is strongest only shall survive.
The solid rock will yield to Time's decay
And many centuries of stormy seas,
Unless it, like the coral, builds anew
And ever rears a front to face the wave.
Thus building, surely races yet shall live
To fill the earth in all its parts and give
Allegiance full of love unto their God.
Then Vice, the offspring of its parent Want,
Shall know a place upon our sphere no more.
The great commandment of the Lord shall live,
And man shall love his neighbour as himself.
Then glorified on high the Lord shall be
In worship's tribute from unselfish hearts.
Goodwill and Peace shall be o'er all the earth.
So might I then, as Simeon did of old,
In all the fullness of a newborn joy,
Cry Nunc Dimittis, and depart well pleased
To see the noblest of our dreams fulfilled,
And know a grander, living creed, well won.

* * *

A few short years have passed : the toiling earth
Has circled thrice around the attractive Orb
That lights and brings to life the forms we know,
Which live to make the life of other lives,
And form one vast stupendous sacrifice
The end whereof no living man can tell.
Yet, why these words? They sound like doubts of that
Which lately passed in speech, by faith informed
From out these lips, in loving homage given.
Yet so! 'Tis gone : the light which beamed for me
Far up above this world of grief and pain
Has sunk for ever in eternal night.
Black darkness doth enshroud the light of years.

page 7

And naught remains, but cold, and dark, and drear:
The expiring flame has left a void behind.
Yet hold! There was a spark in eager haste
I grasped when all was sinking out of view.
'Tis this I hold, and, fanned into a flame,
I trust one day will fill the void within.
Yet never would I wish that one should think
I sorrow for the loss that brings a gain;
For surely, 'tis a gain beyond compare
To feel, whate'er is lost, we hold the Truth.
As sometime storm of wind and rain will come
Into a plot of garden, rendered fair :
By dint of care and timely service given,
The force of elements sweep on and leave;
As well the flowering plant as its support
Laid prostrate on the rainy soddened earth :
Thus, where before there bloomed a garden fair,
Bright with the hues which make the rainbow beam,
There naught remains but prostrate desolation.
'Twas thus I felt with what was of myself,
The doubly-tended garden of those thoughts
Which led right up from childhood's trusting faith
To manhood's stronger views on things sublime—
Crowned by the memory of those happier days
Which knew the treasure of a mother's love
And all a fond, indulgent father's care,
I know 'tis hard to part with that we learn
In childhood's days from fondest mother's lips—
Best treasure of our memory—hard to lose,
When Reason rises and proclaims it vain
And bids us learn again from sterner guides
The paths that Nature's finger-posts point o'er,
Set thick with facts of clear and wondrous worth,
Will satisfy the brain but not the heart,
Which seeks for something knowledge cannot give.
Yet, still in spite of what we feel is not
Nor can be got from Nature's school alone,
Where is there one who goes unbiassed, firm,
Resolved to prove the truth of all he holds,
But finds a Calvary awaits him here below?
Or Gethesemane in which he vainly asks,
Embathed in tears of blood wrung out his soul,

page 8

That only this one chalice be removed,
And finds that he must drain it to the dregs,
Like some poor traveller lost in desert wild
Or 'midst the darkened gloom of forest shades,
Knows naught awaits him, if he stands or lies,
But dreary lonesome death from all his kind,
Still drags his weary limbs along the waste,
Contented well so long as he can strive,
Although the golden eye of smiling morn
May find him cold and stark upon his way.
So, in the kingdom of the mind, will he,
Lost in the gloomy shades of that which once
Seemed bright and clear unto the eyes of faith,
Still clings to all that gives him life in hope.
Though there are moments when that cold, grim form,
Uncertainty, hangs o'er him like a pall,
Quenching the clearer vision that within
Had, from a maze of thought, brought out a line
Of clear conviction to the shape of truth.
'Twould of times seem that man had deeply thought
On all that passed him in his life of pain
And failing sense, to build from out the mass
A brighter lot than ever he had known,
But which he felt should be his own by right
If only man to truth would once be true.
He then and there located joy beyond
That which he knew to all he wished to know
When from this mortal form he'd pass away
To regions where he hoped to live again.
There must be something more: 'tis not for man
To feel th' wondrous stirring power of love
(The purest gold that holds no dross within)—
This striving after something more than earth
Or aught that wealth or love of life can give,
Is surely born of something deeper far
Than ruffles o'er the surface of our thoughts.
There must be something more, or else poor man
Who strives through life to live the pure and true
Were noblest effort thrown to seeming waste
Like seagulls rush to death on stormy nights
'Gainst lonely beacons gleaming o'er the deep.
You say 'tis all-sufficient that the mark

page 9

His earnest striving leaves upon the race
Is ample for the noblest man of all.
But dwells there not within the breasts of those,
Who live by thought to think and act for good,
The wish to still live on, and if not here,
In other states progress in all that's pure :
And though at times 'twould seem eternal rest
Held more to soothe all weary earth-worn souls
Than any promise of eternal life,
There's still the thought (with him who with a will,
Has garnered wisdom through three-score and ten
Of busy years, replete with seeking truth
Till richest stores of fact and fancy lay
Piled up within the strong-room of his brain,
And which, at bidding of his active will,
(Pours out the riches of experience)—
Can this fine sense become the prey of worms?
And have mankind so thought and worked and prayed
And striven after truth in all its forms
But to live on within his offspring's flesh,
The while his mind lies rotting in the dust—
The home of reason, reptiles' slimy den?
It cannot be! All mind rebels to think
That death should end the noblest part of life.
There must be something more! And though to us
'Tis not made plain how it may be fulfilled
We live by hope and rest content therein.
But is it true? or is it but the hope
That lies deep down in every human breast—
The love for those we ever held most dear—
Which makes us feel beyond the narrow stretch
That lies between the cradle and the grave,
In some bright spot we ken not how nor where,
We'll meet once more those ones we loved on earth
It may be but the wish grown up through time
And fostered by the verdant dews of Hope
Which brought into the world the written Word :
That known of us by Jewish mind compiled,
Instinctive with a sense of strong conceit—
Clear evidence of most deluded mind—
That God should leave the millions o'er the earth
To sacrifice to some great form unknown

page 10

The best and fairest of their lives and fruits
To come to one small handful of the race
And show them how His wondrous will inclined
To smell of roasted meats, and shapes of wood
And stone hewn into Temples where His priests
Might sacrifice in robes and sandals made
By strict injunction of Omnipotence
Would seem of sense and justice both bereft
When all the world was seeking for a God.
So thus this later work, its partial song
Still takes a chosen people for its theme.
If God did send His Son in human form
To show poor struggling man a path to bliss
'Twere better had he stayed while earth is earth,
And sin and woe the masters of our lives,
Than he should rise to lofty height of bliss,
And leave us with such tangled skein of Truth,
From which some prove that He Himself is changed
By human hands from bread and wine, and prayer
Of vestured priest and His own will inclined
Back to the living forms of flesh and blood.
While some from out this self-same Testament
Do prove to many thousands 'tis not so,
But done for memory's simple sake alone.
What odds it though how men oft slaved and burned
Each other for some simple phase of thought
Which they termed faith, when by their own avowal
This God for whom they fought had truly willed
That all should be most free while here below
Or surely ne'er was merit in their choice
'Twixt what was pure and what was most alloyed.
If God by man did make this book revealed
To be the guide of all our later lives
And point the only one true way to Heaven,
How comes it that with minds resolved to find
God's truth with His assistance thusly given
That thousands teach by divers ways those points
Of doctrine, and with strong conviction hold
That theirs alone holds all there is of Truth?
And thus by standard of our common-sense
'Twould seem that God so willed that all might serve
As each would will, though this would seem as false

page 11

To reasons clear conviction of the Truth
And makes us ask ourselves if God's own Son
Was more than man, if we're all sons of God.
For as His Word—if 'twas the Word of God—
Or some great power supreme we call First Cause,
Or saying Him or It or what we will,
We feel beyond the material shapes we see
In this vast universe illimitable
There is some form of power we know not of;
Who in that first beginning called all life
From out the mass of great infinate space,
Now filled with shapes of quickened energy
This Battlefield of Earth, wherein all life
Forever in eternal strife to rend
All living forms in darkness and in light—
In earth, and air, and waters everywhere,
With one great law that strongest shall survive.
So in the single and collected mind
Is ever taking place, the keener strife
Selecting strongest limbs of argument
To triumph in the end for what is best,
The higher law that what is right shall live
Thus leaves its impress on the shores of Time.
So should His Word—if 'twas the Word of God—
Stand most immutable through time immense,
Of which that atom part known unto man
Were but a pulse-beat in its mighty life.
And so, if 'twas the work of mortal man,
Like all man's works tis o'er and o'er reborn
In varying phase evolving through the times.
When, clad in hairy robes the cave-men strode,
With flint so chipped to make his arm more sure
Through gloomy forests searching for a meal
To take to tumbling babes and crouching wife
Who, well secluded in the hollow rock,
In fear of man and beast of cruellest kind,
Lest they, discov'ring, should themselves consume.
Where then was God? or but His Godlike word
To show primeval man the power of love?
No! all there was within that rugged form
Of love or hate, of bravery or fear,
Was in the natural promptings of the beasts

page 12

That daily fell beneath his stronger arm.
Self-preservation, Nature's primal law,
Was then the only law known to all life,
Though man did oft in dreams confuse the shapes
Of all those natural forms he saw around
When waking he surveyed the world at large
And built therefrom a shape he ne'er had known
But in the fearsome borderland of sleep
Which had all that he mostly then did fear—
Great length of claws, fangs, wings, and all combined
Or else the crashing sounds of thunderous skies,
To him a voice, the lightnings as His eye
Sent flashing o'er the earth in mighty wrath
At which he shrank, and, grov'ling in his dread,
Prayed He from him His vengeance would avert.
And there we strike a rock on which mankind
Has wasted many an anxious earnest thought.
For had some Great Omniscient Power so willed
That man for gift of life should pay Him prayer,
Then from the dawn of thought each mind had served
By noblest gifts of love and gratitude
Instead of cruel and bloody sacrifice.
So whence those promptings that within the minds
Of all mankind who dwelt in savagedom,
That urged him in the thought of this great God
At bidding of the Druid Oracle
To slay the fairest daughter of his house
'Midst blaze of fires within the gloomy depths
And 'neath the Mystic shades of Britain's oaks:
As well instilled on Aztec's marbled pyres,
The frenzied priest to plunge the sharpened blade
Into the fair white bosom, tightly stretched,
And pluck from thence the palpitating heart
Held high above th' admiring multitude
Who deemed it good, believing all this waste
Was offering fit a God. And He who ne'er,
High Heaven, or where? sent out His Mighty voice
To stay such fearful carnage in His name,
Is still the God, they say, who hears each sound
And feels each thought of man in prayer sent forth.
No! Surely, No! The sign has never come.
When man has asked it, silence mocked his prayer

page 13

And bade him seek his Gods within himself.
This taught in time how futile all the waste
Of lovely youth, or Nature's fairest fruits,
To alter to his will the fixed decrees
Of Nature's laws, and proved to him in truth
That one strong arm allied with firmest will
Were greater odds to gain those ends desired
Than Altar's streaming blood of sacrifice.
And surely, from the scenes which we survey,
Which taking place within the daily course
Of this our Orb traversing space immense,
Of many saddest scenes we see around
Or learn from all the distant parts of earth;
'Twould seem this Power is like to selfish man
Who sings and riots in the thoughtless sense
That comes from many draughts of fragrant wines
While but a stone's throw from his revel lies
Some poor deserted wretch in dying throes
Craving vainly but for one small drop
Of that this other soaks his manhood in.
So, whence the force that prompted mind of man
By simple thought to recreate on earth
That alcoholic liquid demon drink
That makes a hell of man's domestic heaven
And fastens on the mind a blurring film
That deeply shrouds what's nobler in his life
Thus blinds the blissful avenues of hope
And drags its wretched victim to despair—
Has changed the happy home, the kindling blaze
That lights the cheery room, the outspread meal,
And casts a warmer glow upon the face
Of happy wife who waits her loving mate
To welcome from the daily cares of life—
To some grim cellar in a wretched slum,
Where moisture hugs the slimy soddened walls,
The wretched woman shivering on the straw
Where rats and vermin claim a common rest,
Scared by the brute that comes with reeling strides
(And scarce the shape of what was once a man)
At midnight's hour, with curses loud and foul,
A piteous cry perhaps wrung out the frame
Of her who, noblest always in all woe,

page 14

Still clings to him now in besotted shape
Who once was idol of her purest thoughts;
It may be, seeking once more to awake
That wondrous love which made her wish his will—
She makes to him some piteous appeal
That he shall strive but once more to arise.
And he—not he of former loving years,
But some foul demon changed by most fell power—
Strikes low that loving form in years gone by
He loved to vow he'd ever hold most dear.
O God! Art Thou both blind and deaf indeed
That Thou canst neither hear nor see the sum
Of all the sights and sounds of woe that rise
By day and night from this benighted earth?
Is not the cry wrung out from helpless man
Though not in thought directed to Thyself
As well deserving of Thy powerful help
As that which dogma's sterile forms assure
Shall bring to all the help of Thy strong will?
O, surely if there is some Power Supreme,
Who by an instant's exercise of will
Can raise this baleful mantle from mankind,
This warp and woof of poverty and crime,
Or but the circumstance that makes it be
Enwrapped around the shoulders of our race,
And failed to exercise this wondrous power?
Then cruellest beasts unto their offspring kind
Were chords to discords by comparison;
And thoughts like these but leave within the mind
Strong sense of Nature's power being all in all,
Or but the puzzled thought of force unknown
Not governed by our finer sense of love
That either some original impress once
Did'st set all things in motion for all Time
With one great law that lies beyond appeal,
To alter by our own most puny wills.
Or else, 'tis but a chance that thousands die
By what we glibly term an accident—
Though these fine ways of chance are numberless
That work the cause of woe in differing guise—
Unchecked by prayers of pure and earnest minds
And leave us but the thought that sense instils

page 15

That all that is, must be, unalterable.
Then how is man free agent in this life,
When 'tis not given unto his will to bend
Those circumstances that control his thought?
Nor yet to alter in one slight degree
The consequence that works such dire results,
Like some small stone displaced on mountain's side
Will loosen others, so they in their turn
Start some huge boulder in its downward course
That, leaping forward, gathering speed and force
Goes crashing through all obstacles below.
So some blind act we do in early years,
Unheeded for a moment when 'tis done,
Will gather force behind the scenes of life
And working out, unknown to us, its end,
Bears us along with force we can't resist
To compass acts we never have foreseen.
And thus we lose that picture held in youth
Of some Great Power aloft who heeds our prayers
And stands prepared, if good, to grant our wish.
Now some fine morn we scan the printed page,
The envoy of a news-devouring age.
And find some narrative of deadly woe
Away in distant hemisphere of earth,—
Violent bursting of the watery clouds
Rushing down with liquid fury fast—
Of homes, their owners old and young destroyed
By thousands; or, 'tis some great earthquake shock
That rends and tears the solid crust of earth,
Engulphing thousands by the tidal wave
That rushes in to bury such fell work :
And now, once more, 'tis shipwreck's rending tale
Of force of winds with angry seas combined,
Which we are taught in childhood's trusting years
Can never lift their crests but by His will—
That rend and tear the works of man and bring
To fell and sad destruction human life
Through all the horrors of a shipwrecked crew,
Reduced at last by grim and gaunt despair
Of many days within the open boat
Beneath the sweltering heat and torrid glare
Of sun most merciless. The madd'ning thirst

page 16

'Midst tumbling waters far as eye can reach
Makes them to prey like beasts upon their kind
And in the foul and horrible repast
Sustains a life that only lives to die
In ghastly fits of bestial insanity.
Is this, we ask, the work of mercy's God
That suffers not the sparrows' fall untold?
O God! we cry aloud, or would if 'twere,
As once in childhood's simple faith, we held
That, like some tender father's care bestowed
God's loving arms were spread o'er all the earth.
But in the mind that knows no other king
Than Science, Reason, still the will of truth,
We scout the thought that loving God could will
Such things to be, and ponder deep in mind
What vile infernal chance would cause such pass
To fall on man in such dire state oppressed.
Small wonder then that some have seen in all
This never-ending conflict of all life,
Each living by a sacrifice of life,
To be in turn a holocaust for others,
The faith of Zoroaster—dual powers—
Their "Ormuz" and their "Ahriman" at war.
This bears the semblance of what seems more true
Than one good Power, who all Omnipotent,
Would loose such evils to afflict the earth.
The Persians' Powers, both good and evil, reign
In air and earth and waters everywhere,
And Men but puppets to express their wills;
Their dual intent made manifest in all
That was and is or ever is to be.
This seems to bear of sense a fairish store,
For if some wondrous Power doth move the heart
Of man for all that seems most good and true,
This other Power of equal strength for ill
Would seem at times to triumph over that
And thus put forth Its will defiant to rule;
Though even this, to reason's calmer sway,
Would seem absurd upon its very face;
For surely, these great Powers of equal might
Had never had existence in the shape
Of active force from all Eternity,

page 17

To see-saw through the mystic march of Time.
No: this as well expresses but the will
Of man to find due reason for effects,
The causes of which must for ever lie
Behind the Veil of the Unknowable.
When I have striven by reason's force to clear
My thoughts from superstition's grosser thrall,
Then Nature's promptings have to me made plain
The devious paths trod by the minds of men
In ages dark, ere yet the purer flame
Of Science pointed out the ways of Truth
From Nature's books—the rocks—that truly tell
Their wondrous story to our keener gaze:
And in the stars; in all that moves and lives
There's testimony for a grander cried
Than ever sprang from superstition's fount.
And now to guide us on our forward way,
In printed pages, lie the works of those
Grand Pioneers of the ages gone,
Who first, despite all pain or suff'ring death,
Did hold aloft above the heads of those
Wh0 grovelled in some most delusive fear,
That spotless lamp of Truth by which we know
Who will but in that purest glow upraise
Those eyes long blinded by the coward dread
Of all the past creation's of men's minds
feat they were but the strivings of his will,
His mental part, but still in embryo,
displacing simpler laws of Nature's realm,
Which they knew not, and to some power unseen
Attributed the unaccountable.
Though what are we? How small with all we know
Of matter, space, of motion, force, and law
Of energy, that brought to compact mass
The countless atoms in the distant past;
Or how these very atoms came to shape
Their forms minute within the mystic realm,
And fill with all we see the mighty void
Of infinite and all pervading space
Must long defy the wisdom of mankind.
The limit of all thought is ever reached
When man but touches on that distant time

page 18

When shape was naught and all was wanting life,
Sure some conceive in thought of subtlest sense
That naught is real but comes from some vast mind
That permeates the essences of all.
Another, that from out the endless space
Some Personal and Influencing Form,
Of whom they say we bear th' material shape,
Did from a vast Infinity of naught
Call into being all the shapes we know
Of Suns and Systems, Earth and all combined.
To him, who peers beneath the cloak of time,
'Tis all but guesses of the vaguest kind :
This must, tor certain, ever lie beyond
The veil that forever stands upreared
'Twixt craving search and the unknowable.
No matter where we take our mental stand,
E'en though we may account for what we are
By all that master-mind, gone to his rest,
Did prove by evolution's lasting truth
That certain 'tis from lower forms of life
All living shapes we know obtain their being,
There still remains the thought and ever will—
For what great purpose were we called to life?
Unto what state are we traversing time?
This thought, 'twould seem, will never be appeased
So long as man endures of thinking mind.
'Twas this gave birth to all that's gone before,
'Twill stimulate creations yet to come
Within the minds of marvel-loving man—
These phantoms he has raised to rule him here,
And fill with fear his thoughts of what may come
When death divides him from his fellow man.
Though we in sterner thought may take our stand
On solid ground of fact, on which alone
The human mind can ever be secure,
Gathering strength along the forward march
Of Human Progress through the time to come,
With firmer effort to divide more sure
The musty shapes of superstition's lore
From all the solid facts of Nature's truths.
And though ofttimes the longings will arise
To be once more with those we loved in life,

page 19

We'll forward strive with trust, that if indeed
Beyond the confines of the life we know
There is another conscious life extant,
That this Great Power will be most just to all.

* * *

With one more effort, strong in will, to do
I'll strive to sing a lay to grander chords,
Though not to me has come those sweeter strains
That make the Poet's words a melody
Of love-sent gospels unto all mankind.
I would but sing a truth in plainer song:
Both beautiful and useful have a place—
Among the flowers that deck the breast of earth—
'Tis nothing but utility behind :
The beautiful exists but in the mind,
And by comparison alone 'tis known :
Our choices are as wide as poles apart.
'Tis natural to shun the slimy worm,
And yet it serves me more than trusty hound.
We hate all tigers, serpents, things that prey :
Yet these too serve their turn in Nature's plan,
Where naught can live but something else must die.
But 'twere unwise to think too deeply here,
This greater mystery 'mong mysteries,
Of why such universal carnage makes
The sum and substance of all mortal life.
Rather cast the strong, unfolding mind
On this last one of earth, this Human Love,
Too seeming pure to come of such a dam,
Whose Instincts seem so opposite in all.
Then back to lays that sing of greater man
Who, rising free from puerile forms of faith
That bound him while in superstition's chain
Strikes boldly forth to lead the finer life
Which recognizes naught but that contained
Within the primal note of clearer minds
Called Duty—and whose stimulous shall spring
Neither from the dreadsome fears of Hell—
The plague of countless suffering generations—
Nor yet from hope of that exclusive Heaven,
The dual creations of a feebler age,
Tho' stronger perhaps in many a manly feat

page 20

That springs from strength of animal parts alone.!
Yet far behind this keener age of thought
In all that makes man kinder to his kind,
A Hell indeed have we which lies within
The bounds of suffering humanity,
Crushed low to earth by many cruel laws.
The exercise of falsest sense of power
That makes a slavery of vilest form
Exist beneath the fairest canopies
That crown the wailing mass of human woe.
But this he feels, within his inmost heart,
Shall pass away by strength of willing minds
When they but see in its true shape exposed
That monstrous form of Greed devouring all—
'Tis nature's primal law transferred to mind.
Yet why should we, of all that cumbers earth,
Forsake in one small part the only means
By which all things that live continue being?
'Twould seem to tempt destruction's force to rise
And take a swift revenge for this affront
That we would put on Nature's greatest law.
But retrospective visions of the past
Too plainly show the broader clearer path
By which man came from this Primeval state
Of crudest thought, on selfish laws alone,
Which taught him then that only might was right;
That all was wrong which failed to bring him gain.
To all that makes our grander creed to-day
Pourtray the noblest acts of man in love
And sacrifice of Self for other's sakes,
Who, lower in the struggling ways of life,
Stand most in need of helpful hands outstretched.
Whence comes this beauteous one, this latest birth
To man's estate of earth's maternity?
'Tis surely of the truth, which all men know,
Who, testing in the fields of sad experience,
Have found that none may scatter sorrow's germs
But swift recoil enfolds the scatterer,
Have learned that none against themselves may sin
But they involve some others in the wrong
That leads to long and torturing misfortune,
Which pointed out unerringly the while

page 21

That he who tries to raise these sadder ones
Most surely helps himself and all he loves
To mount to greater heights of human bliss.
Like lowering mists that vanish as the Sun
Ascending strikes the lofty mountain tops
And draws the vapoury forms from deepest glens,
So 'tis to clearer views of greater truths
That we must trust to man's emancipation
From falsest understanding of the good,
And all distorted fantasies of life,
Which cloud our noblest vision for realities.
We go in youth as with a robe enwrapped—
The tightly fitting garment of delusion—
Which, later, when the mind inclines to rove
The higher healthier regions of pure thought,
Still clings around us all the tattered robes
Which must be cast aside long ere we run
With stronger sturdier form, which comes alone
From drawing unimpeded greater draughts,
Far up among the Alpine heights of Truth.
'Tis with reflective eyes to stand above
And view these social monuments of man,
These Pyramids of countless human lives,
Evidence of living immolation,
That brings the clearer grasp of what is right—
The strength to analyse, with sense to hold
Through life the gems that stud our modern mire—
Were worthier far the patient search of all
Than building stately Temples to Delusion.
The Science that can conquer some disease
Which lurks malignant in our mortal frames,
Does nobler work for suff'ring humanity
Than heads of thousands bent in fruitless prayer.
The stronger mind that grasps a social wrong
Whereby the living touches labour lends
To all the dead and seeming inert mass
Is bacillus like keenly preyed upon
By Parasites, that feed on fair exchange,
Till all that's noble in the mind of man
Is crushed and he scarce left the human shape
To move his cogged existence in the round
Of this fine social mill that grinds the lives

page 22

To finest dust of fairest man and woman.
To him, I say, who grasps this foulest thing
That baser demons foist upon the race,
And wrestles with his might to conquer wrong,
Were worthier far the grateful thoughts of man
Than he who gives in boundless charities,
Which are but garnered from the unjust spoil.
What good to lap the sail around the hull
Whose gaping sides still suck the briny flood?
Then steer the straining bark from shelf ring shores
And court destruction from the tempest's force
Far out upon the stormy seas of Time.
There is a creed that's growing day by day
Within the hearts and minds of honest men:
Its life is in the precept strong and true
That justice shall be done to all mankind,
Not in some world remote from all we know,
But here, and now, where all men need it most,
Who scorn to pay, as purchase, noble deeds
Or acts of faith for state of future bliss,
But live by justices' cause—naught else is just—
And loving all mankind for sake of man.
This, for the one who views with keener sight
The distant peaks that form the lofty heights
Of universal human happiness,
Were heaven enough for noblest souls to strive:
This sense enthroned within the purest minds
Has made the Greatest Saviours of Mankind,
Who, moved to sorrow by the pangs of life,
The unequal lot of toiling, starving flesh,
Of wealth and want, light, glee, and dark despair,
So strangely mixed, so cruelly apportioned,
And surely makes those nobler lives we know,
Whose patient search along the rocky paths
That lead to gulfs of stern reality,
As strong in evidence of deeds most pure
As they, whose strength in curbing passion's sway
Comes from a hope, whose animating creed
Holds out a future life of ideal bliss
For doing what our better instincts prove
Is naught but Justice to Humanity.
Then let us all be giants, and with a will

page 23

Suppressing wrong, exalting right on high,
Thus hasten on the time that's surely nigh
When one encircling all-enduring clasp
Shall make a Grander Brotherhood of Man
Progress in glory over all the earth.

* * * *

This, then, my plea to Thee, Great Social Power—
The mighty mammoth of an age to come!
Oh, would that I might live to see those days
That shadows of a future seem to cast
Athwart the puny efforts of our time:
These Blossoms of a Fruit we may not taste,
To ripen in the days we may not see,
A heritage of Life in Harmony.