The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems Part 34

His loving eye sees through all evil good.

Man's life is but a breath; but lo with Him To-day, to-morrow, yesterday, are one One in the cycle of eternal time That hath beginning none, nor any end.

The Earth revolving round her sire, the Sun, Measures the flying year of mortal man, But who shall measure G.o.d's eternal year?

The unbegotten, everlasting G.o.d; Unmade, eternal, all-pervading power; Center and source of all things, high and low, Maker and master of the Universe-- Ah, nay, the mighty Universe itself!

All things in nature bear G.o.d's signature So plainly writ that he who runs may read.

We know not what life is; how may we know Death--what it is, or what may lie beyond?

Whoso forgets his G.o.d forgets himself.

Let me not blindly judge my brother man: There is but one just judge; there is but one Who knows the hearts of men. Him let us praise-- Not with blind prayer, or idle, sounding psalms-- But let us daily in our daily works, Praise G.o.d by righteous deeds and brother-love.

Go forth into the forest and observe-- For men believe their eyes and doubt their ears-- The creeping vine, the shrub, the lowly bush, The dwarfed and stunted trees, the bent and bowed, And here and there a lordly oak or elm, And o'er them all a tall and princely pine.

All struggle upward, but the many fail; The low dwarfed by the shadows of the great, The stronger basking in the genial sun.

Observe the myriad fishes of the seas-- The mammoths and the minnows of the deep.

Behold the eagle and the little wren, The condor on his cliff, the pigeon-hawk, The teal, the coot, the broad-winged albatross.

Turn to the beasts in forest and in field-- The lion, the lynx, the mammoth and the mouse, The sheep, the goat, the bullock and the horse, The fierce gorillas and the chattering apes-- Progenitors and prototypes of man.

Not only differences in genera find, But grades in every kind and every cla.s.s.

I would not doom to serfdom or to toil One race, one caste, one cla.s.s, or any man: Give every honest man an honest chance; Protect alike the rich man and the poor; Let not the toiler live upon a crust While Croesus' bread is b.u.t.tered on both sides.

O people's king and shepherd, throned Law, Strike down the monsters of Monopoly.

Lift up thy club, O mighty Hercules!

Behold thy "Labors" yet unfinished are: Tear off thy Nessus s.h.i.+rt and bare thine arms.

The Numean lion fattens on our flocks; The Lernean Hydra coils around our farms, Our towns, our mills, our mines, our factories; The triple monster Geryon lives again, Grown quadruple, and over all our plains And thousand hills his fattening oxen feed.

Stymphalean buzzards ravage round our fields; The Augean stables reeking stench the land; The hundred-headed monster Cerberus, That throttled Greece and ravaged hapless France, Hath broke from h.e.l.l and howls for human blood.

Lift up thy knotted club, O Hercules!

Strike swift and sure: crush down the Hydra's heads; Throttle the Numean lion: strike! nor spare The monster Geryon or the buzzard-beaks.

Clean the Augean stables if thou can'st; But hurl the hundred-headed monster down Headlong to Hades: chain him; make thee sure He shall not burst the bonds of h.e.l.l again.

To you, O chosen makers of the laws, The nation looks--and shall it look in vain?

Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips, Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries-- While all around the dark horizon loom Clouds thunder-capped that bode a hurricane?

Sleep ye as slept the "Notables" of France, While under them an hundred aetnas hissed And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock?

Be ye our Hercules--and Lynceus-eyed: Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin-- Ere "Liberty" take Justice by the throat, And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck, Throttle the "Trusts", and crush the coils combined That crack our bones and fatten on our fields.

Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy: Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend Mothered of h.e.l.l and father of all fiends-- Fell monster with an hundred b.l.o.o.d.y mouths, And every mouth an hundred hissing tongues, And every tongue drips venom from his fangs.

Protect the toiling millions by just laws; Let honest labor find its sure reward; Let willing hands find work and honest bread.

So frame the laws that every honest man May find his home protected and his craft.

Let Liberty and Order walk hand in hand With Justice: happy Trio! let them rule.

Put up the bars: bar out the pauper swarms Alike from Asia's huts and Europe's hives.

Let charity begin at home. In vain Will we bar out the swarms from Europe's hives And Asia's countless lepers, if our ports Are free to all the products of their hands.

Put up the bars: bar out the pauper hordes; Bar out their products that compete with ours: Give honest toil at home an honest chance: Build up our own and keep our coin at home.

In vain our mines pour forth their wealth of gold And silver, if by every s.h.i.+p it sail For London, Paris, Birmingham or Berlin.

We have been prodigal. The days are past When virgin acres wanted willing hands, When fertile empires lay in wilderness Waiting the teeming millions of the world.

Lo where the Indian and the bison roamed--Lords of the prairies boundless as the sea--But twenty years ago, behold the change!

Homesteads and hamlets, flocks and lowing herds, Railways and cities, miles of rustling corn, And leagues on leagues of waving fields of gold.

Let wise men teach and honest men proclaim The mutual dependence of the rich and poor; For if the wealthy profit by the poor, The poor man profits ever by the rich.

Wealth builds our churches and our colleges; Wealth builds the mills that grind the million's bread; Wealth builds the factories that clothe the poor; Wealth builds the railways and the million ride.

G.o.d hath so willed the toiling millions reap The golden harvest that the rich have sown.

Six feet of earth make all men even; lo The toilers are the rich man's heirs at last.

But there be men would grumble at their lot, Even if it were a corner-lot on Broadway.

We stand upon the shoulders of the past.

Who knoweth not the past how may he know The folly or the wisdom of to-day?

For by comparison we weigh the good, And by comparison all evil weigh.

"What can we reason, but from what we know?"

Let honest men look back an hundred years-- Nay, fifty, and behold the wondrous change.

Where wooden tubs like sluggards sailed the sea, Steam-s.h.i.+ps of steel like greyhounds course the main; Where lumbering coach and wain and wagon toiled Through mud and mire and rut and rugged way, The cus.h.i.+oned train a mile a minute flies.

Then by slow coach the message went and came, But now by lightning bridled to man's use We flash our silent thoughts from sea to sea; Nay, under ocean's depths from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e; And talk by telephone to distant ears.

The dreams of yesterday are deeds to-day.

Our frugal mothers spun with tedious toil, And wove the homespun cloth for all their fold; Their needles plied by weary fingers sewed.

Behold, the humming factory spins and weaves, The singing "Singer" sews with lightning speed.

Our fathers sowed their little fields by hand, And reaped with bended sickles and bent backs; By hand they bound the sheaves of wheat and rye; With flails they threshed and winnowed in the wind.

Now by machines we sow and reap and bind; By steam we thresh and sack the bounteous grain.

These are but few of all the million ways Whereby man's toil is lightened and he hath gained Tenfold in comfort, luxury and ease.

For these and more the millions that enjoy May thank the wise and wealthy few who gave.

If the rich are richer the poor are richer too.

A narrow demagogue I count the man Who cries to-day--_"Progress and Poverty"_; As if a thousand added comforts made The poor man poorer and his lot the worse.

'Tis but a new toot on the same old horn That brayed in ancient Greece and Babylon, And now amid the ruined walls of Rome Lies buried fathoms deep in dead men's dust.

_"Progress and Poverty!"_ Man, hast thou traced The blood that throbs commingled in thy veins?

Over thy shoulder hast thou cast a glance On thine old Celtic-Saxon-Norman sires-- Huddled in squalid huts on beds of straw?

Barefooted churls swine-herding in the fens, Bare-legged cowherds in their cow-skin coats, Wearing the collars of their Thane or Eorl, His serfs, his slaves, even as thy dog is thine; Harried by hunger, pillaged, ravaged, slain, By Viking robbers and the warring Jarls; Oft glad like hunted swine to fill their maws With herbs and acorns. _"Progress and Poverty!"_ The humblest laborer in our mills or mines Is royal Thane beside those slavish churls; The frugal farmer in our land to-day Lives better than their kings--himself a king.

Lo every age refutes old errors still, And still begets new errors for the next; But all the creeds of politics or priests Can't make one error truth, one truth a lie.

There is no religion higher than the truth; Men make the creeds, but G.o.d ordains the law.

Above all cant, all arguments of men, Above all superst.i.tions, old or new, Above all creeds of every age and clime, Stands the eternal truth--the creed of creeds.

Sweet is the lute to him who hath not heard The prattle of his children at his knees: Ah, he is rich indeed whose humble home Contains a frugal wife and sweet content.

HELOISE

I saw a light on yester-night-- A low light on the misty lea; The stars were dim and silence grim Sat brooding on the sullen sea.

From out the silence came a voice-- A voice that thrilled me through and through, And said, "Alas, is this your choice?

For he is false and I was true."

And in my ears the pa.s.sing years Will sadly whisper words of rue: Forget--and yet--can I forget That one was false and one was true?

CHANGE

Change is the order of the universe.

Worlds wax and wane; suns die and stars are born.

Two atoms of cosmic dust unite, cohere-- And lo the building of a world begun.