MISCELLANEOUS
THE FIST
I shut my eyes and opened them,
And while they were shut I saw
All the dread things that happen to men
In the name of cause and law.
I saw the tortured toil and travail
As the cost of bread and birth;
I saw the skein of fate unravel
Around the helpless earth;
A million who had nobly striven
Go down to grim defeat,
A million who their heart-blood given
Spurned from proud Honor’s seat;
Hope mocked and dear ideals shattered,
Truth crushed and crucified,
The fruits of love and labor scattered
And Greed o’er Goodness ride;
Curse like a ghoul despair and sorrow
Leave at the race’s door,
Pledging to-morrow and to-morrow
Cursing the world still more.
And as men were broken and stricken
I saw the darkness loom
To a frown of Hate and slowly thicken
To a spectral shape of Doom.
Shadows, thunders, griefs and grossness
Gathered in a blacker mass,
Life’s calamities and crosses
Wrapped the midnight of all space
Into—God! What awful likeness
Of a giant arm and wrist
Bulking blacker still to smite us
As a clenched terrific FIST!
THE OPEN HAND
I shut my eyes and opened them,
And when they were open I saw
All the glad things that happen to men
By a more benignant law.
I saw the smiling heaven bending
Above the fruitful land,
The beauty and the bounty blending,
The kiss of sea on strand;
The love in labor and the guerdon
Of home and wrought ideal,
The benison behind the burden,
The worth which works the weal;
The glory of the sacrificial,
The sanctity and song
Of Nature’s benedictive missal
O’er suffering and wrong.
I saw the good and grace of seasons
Aglow with golden yield,
And giving trust a thousand reasons
In flowerfest and field;
Until a misty plexus trembled
In midair and anon
A presence as of Love resembled
Diaphanous at dawn,
With morning vestments all a-shimmer,
Yet from whose potent charm
Of godlike gloriole and glimmer
There stretched a Titan ARM.
Earth and sky seemed coalescing
By filmy fingers spanned
And became as if in blessing
A mighty, OPEN HAND.