A bird has little—only a feather
Plucked, it may be, from a tender breast,
Only a thread to bind together
The delicate fabric of his nest;
Yet he sings, “The wide, free air is mine,
The dews of earth, the clouds of heaven!”
He sits and swings with the swinging vine,
And all he looks on to him is given.
A child has little—only a blossom
Caught at random from fields of bloom.
Only the love in a tender bosom,
Freed from the shadow of care and gloom;
Yet he laughs all day from the deeps of lightness,
And feels his joy in the joy of heaven,
He loses himself in a world of brightness,
And all he asks for to him is given.
A man has little—only a longing
Higher than labors of sword or pen,
Only a vision whose lights are thronging
Over the tumult and toil of men.
Yet wealth is his from the wealth of being,
His are the glories of Earth and Heaven,
He feels a beauty too deep for seeing,
And all he dreams of to him is given.
My Portion.
Very little good have I,
Wealth and station have passed me by;
But something sweet in my life I hold
That I would not exchange for place or gold.
Beneath my feet the green earth lies,
Above my head are the tender skies;
I look between two heavens; my eyes
Look out to where, serene and sweet,
At the worlds fair rim the two heavens meet.
I hear the whispering of the breeze,
The sweet, small tumults amid the trees;
And many a message comes to me
On the wing of bird, in the hum of bee,
From the mountain peak and the surging sea.
E’en the silence speaks a voice so clear,
I lean my very heart to hear,
And all above me and all around
Light and darkness and sight and sound,
To soul and sense such meanings bring,
I thrill with a rapturous wondering.
And I know by many a subtle sign
That the very best of life is mine;
And yet, as I spell each message o’er,
I look and long for a deeper lore;
I long to see and I long to hear,
With a clearer vision, a truer ear;
And I pray with keenest of all desire
For lips that are touched by the altar fire.
Patience, O soul! From a little field
There cometh often a gracious yield;
Who touches His garment’s hem is healed.
Saxon Grit.
Worn by the battle, by Stamford town,
Fighting the Norman by Hastings bay;
Harold, the Saxon’s sun, went down
When the acorns were falling one autumn day.
Then the Norman said: “I am lord of the land,
By tenure of conquest here I sit;
I will rule you now with the iron hand;”
But he had not thought of the Saxon grit.
He took the land, and he took the men,
And burnt the homesteads from Trent to Tyne;
Made the freemen serfs by a stroke of the pen;
Ate up the corn and drank the wine.
From the Saxon heart rose a mighty roar,
Our life shall not be by the king’s permit,—
We will fight for the right; we want no more.
Then the Norman found out the Saxon grit.
For slow and sure as the oaks had grown
From the acorns falling that autumn day,
So the Saxon manhood in thorpe and town
To a nobler nature grew alway.
Winning by inches, holding by clinches,
Standing by law and the human right;
Many times failing, never once quailing,
So the new day came out of the night.
Then rising afar in the western sea
A new world stood in the morn of the day,
Ready to welcome the brave and free,
Who would wrench out the heart, and march away
From the narrow, contracted, dear old land,
Where the poor are held by a cruel bit,
To ampler spaces for heart and hand;
And here was a chance for the Saxon grit.
Steadily steering, eagerly peering,
Trusting in God, your fathers came,
Pilgrims and strangers, fronting all dangers,
Cool-headed Saxons, with hearts aflame,
Bound by the letter, but free from the fetter,
And hiding their freedom in holy writ,
They gave Deuteronomy hints in economy,
And made a new Moses of Saxon grit,
They whittled and waded through forest and fen,
Fearless as ever of what might befall,
Pouring out life for the nurture of men
In the faith that by manhood the world views all.
Inventing baked beans and no end of machines,
Great with the rifle, and great with the ax,
Sending their notions over the oceans
To fill empty stomachs and straighten bent backs;
Swift to take chances that end in the dollar,
Yet open of hand when the dollar is made;
Maintaining the meeting, exalting the scholar,
But a little too anxious about a good trade.
This is young Jonathan, son of old John,
Positive, peaceable, firm in the right.
Saxon men all of us, may we be one,
Steady for freedom and strong in her might.
Then slow and sure, as the oaks have grown
From the acorns that fell on the dim old day,
So this new manhood, in city and town,
To a nobler stature will grow alway.
Winning by inches, holding by clinches,
Slow to contention and slower to quit,
Now and then failing, but never once quailing,
Let us thank God for the Saxon grit.
The Little Light.
The light shone dim on the headland,
For the storm was raging high;
I shaded my eyes from the inner glare,
And gazed on the wet, gray sky.
It was dark and lowering; on the sea
The waves were booming loud,
And the snow and the piercing winter sleet
Wove over all a shroud.
“God pity the men on the sea to-night!”
I said to my little ones,
And we shuddered as we heard afar
The sound of the minute-guns.
My good man came in, in his fishing-coat
(He was wet and cold that night),
And he said, “There’ll lots of ships go down
On the headland rocks to-night.”
“Let the lamp burn all night, mother,”
Cried little Mary then;
“’Tis but a little light, but still
It might save drowning men.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried her father
(He was tired and cross that night),
“The Highland light-house is enough,”
And he put out the light.
That night, on the rocks below us,
A noble ship went down;
But one was saved from the ghastly wreck,
The rest were left to drown.
“We steered by a little light,” he said,
“’Till we saw it sink from view:
If they’d only left that light all night,
My mates might be here, too!”
Then little Mary sobbed aloud,
Her father blushed for shame,
“’Twas our light that you saw,” he said,
“And I’m the one to blame.”
’Twas a little light—how small a thing!
And trifling was its cost;
Yet, for want of it a ship went down,
And a hundred souls were lost.
Wind and Sea.
The sea is a jovial comrade,
He laughs wherever he goes;
His merriment shines in the dimpling lines
That wrinkle his hale repose;
He lays himself down at the feet of the sun,
And shakes all over with glee;
And the broad-backed billows fall faint on the shore
In the mirth of the mighty sea.
But the wind is sad and restless,
And cursed with an inward pain;
You may hark as you will by valley or hill,
But you hear him still complain.
He wails on the barren mountains,
And shrieks on the watery sea;
He sobs in the cedar and moans in the pine,
And quakes through the aspen tree.
Welcome are both their voices;
And I know not which is best,
The laughter that slips from ocean’s lips,
Or the comfortless wind’s unrest.
There’s a pang in all rejoicing,
A joy in the heart of pain;
And the wind that saddens, the sea that gladdens,
Are singing the self-same strain.
Happiness.
I followed a bird to the north and south,
I followed it east and west,
With the longing to call it at last my own,
And hide it within my breast:
But the bird flew on, and I sought in vain,
Through sunshine and wind, through the storm and rain.
I went to the city, to find it, where
The restless crowd surged by;
But the bird I sought, with its snowy wings
Had flown to the upper sky,—
And the crowds surged on, with their ceaseless din,
Their waves of sorrow and folly and sin.
I went to the forest, where all day long
A hush that was sweet fell down,
And I watched for my bird with its magical song,
But the shadows gave only a frown;
So I knew that I never should find it there,
And I gave up the chase in sullen despair.
I entered the lists of the busy world:
I took up its burden of care,
Its wrongs to be righted, its sorrows to lift,
Its mountains of trouble to bear;
And wearied, I laid me at last to rest.
I awoke,—and the bird was within my breast.
An Illumined Text.
The gray monk, rising, with a loving pride
Laid the long task of patient months aside,
The simple story of the gospels told
In lettering of crimson and of gold;
On its rich pages streamed the setting sun,
And now his life waned and his work was done.
He pushed away the heavy oaken door,
And stood within the sunset calm once more.
Above the narrowing round of life he knew
A sense of beauty and of wonder grew.
The text his art had copied, “God is Love,”
Came to him like the home-returning dove.
As the wind whistled in the bearded grain;
The tender words made music in his brain;
The green leaves whispered of it, everywhere
He read it on the blue scroll of the air,
As if more clearly and in fairer guise
The Lord Himself inscribed it for men’s eyes!
Christian at Work.
Older than all preached gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for-ever-enduring gospel: work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a spirit of active method, a force for work;—and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent facts around thee? What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable, obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, subdue him; make order of him, the subject not of chaos, but of intelligence, divinity, and thee! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that, in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the naked skin of man be covered.—Thomas Carlyle.
The King’s Bell.
“No perfect day has ever come to me,”
An old man said;
“A perfect day for us can never be
Till we are dead.”
The young king heard him, and he turned away
In earnest thought.
Did men ne’er find on earth the perfect day
For which they sought?
A day all free from care?—so running o’er
With life’s delight
That there seemed room or wish for nothing more
From dawn to night?
“It must be that such days have come to man,”
The young king said.
“Go search—find one who found them—if you can!”
Ah, wise gray head!
“I trust that some time such a day will come
To even me,”
The king said. But the old man’s lips were dumb—
A doubter he.
“That you, and those about you all may know
My perfect day,
A bell shall ring out when the sun is low,
And men shall say—
“‘Behold! this day has been unto the king
A day replete
With happiness. It lacked not anything—
A day most sweet!’”
In a high tower, ere night, the passers saw
A mighty bell,
The tidings of a day without a flaw
Some time to tell.
The bell hung silent in its lofty tower,
Days came and went;
Each summer brought its sunshine and its flower,
Its old content;
But not the happy day he hoped to see.
“But soon or late
The day of days,” he said, “will come to me.
I trust—and wait.”
The years, like leaves upon a restless stream,
Were swept away,
And in the king’s dark hair began to gleam
Bright threads of gray.
Men, passing by, looked upward to the bell,
And smiling said,
“Delay not of the happy time to tell
Till we are dead.”
But they grew old and died. And silent still
The great bell hung;
And the good king, bowed down with age, fell ill
His cares among.
At dusk, one day, with dazed brain, from his room
He slowly crept
Up rattling tower-steps, in dust and gloom,
While watchers slept.
Above the city broke the great bell’s voice,
Silent so long.
“Behold the king’s most happy day! Rejoice!”
It told the throng.
Filled with strange awe, the long night passed away.
At morn men said,
“At last the king has found his happy day—
The king is dead!”
Noblesse Oblige.
If I am weak and you are strong,
Why then, why then,
To you the braver deeds belong;
And so, again,
If you have gifts and I have none,
If I have shade and you have sun,
’Tis yours with freer hand to give,
’Tis yours with truer grace to live,
Than I, who giftless, sunless, stand,
With barren life and hand.
We do not ask the little brook
To turn the wheel;
Unto the larger stream we look.
The strength of steel
We do not ask from silken bands,
Nor heart of oak in willow wands;
We do not ask the wren to go
Up to the heights the eagles know;
Nor yet expect the lark’s clear note
From out the dove’s dumb throat.
’Tis wisdom’s law, the perfect code,
By love inspired;
Of him on whom much is bestowed
Is much required.
The tuneful throat is bid to sing,
The oak must reign the forest’s king;
The rushing stream the wheel must move,
The beaten steel its strength must prove.
’Tis given unto the eagle’s eyes
To face the midday skies.
Uses of Adversity.
If none were sick and none were sad,
What service could we render?
I think if we were always glad,
We scarcely could be tender.
Did our beloved never need
Our patient ministration,
Earth would grow cold, and miss, indeed,
Its sweetest consolation.
If sorrow never claimed our heart,
And every wish were granted,
Patience would die and hope depart,
Life would be disenchanted.
The Value of Literature.
The literature of the world is in a very deep sense the direct and most beautiful outcome of its life. Men have had but a partial success in shaping their external life, but their ideals, their aspirations, their highest thoughts of themselves are to be found in books. It is only as we unite the actual which we find in its history with the ideal which we find in its literature, that we are able to get any true understanding of an age. The value and vitality of great books lie not so much in their art as in the fidelity and completeness with which they represent human life. Literature is, in a word, the best that has been thought or dreamed in the world, and must therefore remain to the very end of time the most fascinating and the most fruitful study to which men can give themselves.—Hamilton W. Mabie.
True Heroism.
Let others write of battles fought
On bloody, ghastly fields,
Where honors greet the man who wins,
And death the man who yields;
But I will write of him who fights
And vanquishes his sins,
Who struggles on through weary years
Against himself and wins.
He is a hero, stanch and brave,
Who fights an unseen foe,
And puts at last beneath his feet
His passions base and low;
Who stands erect in manhood’s might
Undaunted, undismayed—
The bravest man that drew a sword
In foray or in raid.
It calls for something more than brawn
Or muscle, to overcome
An enemy who marcheth not
With banner, plume, and drum—
A foe, forever lurking nigh,
With silent, stealthy tread,
Forever near your board by day,
And night beside your bed.
All honor, then, to that brave heart,
Though poor or rich he be,
Who struggles with his baser part—
Who conquers and is free!
He may not wear a hero’s crown,
Nor fill a hero’s grave;
But truth will place his name among
The bravest of the brave.
The Burial of the Old Flag.
There is not in all the north countrie,
Nor yet on the Humber line,
A town with a prouder record than
Newcastle-upon-the-Tyne.
Roman eagles have kept its walls;
Saxon, and Dane, and Scot
Have left the glamour of noble deeds,
With their names, on this fair spot.
From the reign of William Rufus,
The monarchs of every line
Had a grace for loyal Newcastle,
The city upon the Tyne.
By the Nuns’ Gate, and up Pilgrim Street,
What pageants have held their way!
But in seventeen hundred and sixty-three,
One lovely morn in May,
There was a sight in bonnie Newcastle!
Oh, that I had been there!
To hear the call of the trumpeters
Thrilling the clear spring air,
To hear the roar of the cannon,
And the drummer’s gathering beat,
And the eager hum of the multitudes
Waiting upon the street.
Just at noon was a tender hush,
And a funeral march was heard;
With arms reversed and colors tied
Came the men of the Twenty-third.
And Lennox, their noble leader, bore
The shreds of a faded flag,
The battle-flag of the regiment,
Shot to a glorious rag;
Shot into shreds upon its staff,
Torn in a hundred fights,
From the torrid plains of India
To the cold Canadian heights.
There was not an inch of bunting left;
How could it float again
Over the faithful regiment
It never had led in vain?
And oh, the hands that had carried it!
It was not cloth and wood:
It stood for a century’s heroes,
And was crimson with their blood;
It stood for a century’s comrades.
They could not cast it away,
And so with a soldier’s honors
They were burying it that day.
In the famous old North Humber fort,
Where the Roman legions trod,
With the roar of cannon and roll of drums
They laid it under the sod.
But it wasn’t a tattered flag alone
They buried with tender pride;
It was every faithful companion
That under the flag had died.
It was honor, courage, and loyalty
That thrilled that mighty throng
Standing bare-headed and silent as
The old flag passed along.
So when the grasses had covered it
There was a joyful strain;
And the soldiers, stirred to a noble thought,
Marched proudly home again.
The citizens went to their shops once more,
The collier went to his mine;
The shepherd went to the broomy hills,
And the sailor to the Tyne;
But men and women and children felt
That it had been well to be
Just for an hour or two face to face
With honor and loyalty.
The Old Stone Basin.
In the heart of the busy city,
In the scorching noontide heat,
A sound of bubbling water
Falls on the din of the street.
It falls in a gray stone basin,
And over the cool wet brink
The heads of thirsty horses
Each moment are stretched to drink.
And peeping between the crowding heads
As the horses come and go,
“The Gift of Three Little Sisters”
Is read on the stone below.
Ah, beasts are not taught letters,
They know no alphabet;
And never a horse in all these years
Has read the words; and yet
I think that each toil-worn creature
Who stops to drink by the way,
His thanks in his own dumb fashion
To the sisters small must pay.
Years have gone by since busy hands
Wrought at the basin’s stone;
The kindly little sisters
Are all to women grown.
I do not know their home or fates,
Or the name they bear to men,
But this sweetness of their gracious deed
Is just as fresh as then.
And all life long, and after life,
They must the happier be,
For the cup of water given by them
When they were children three.
Beside the Railway Track.
On its straight iron pathway the long train was rushing,
With its noise, and its smoke, and its great human load;
And I saw a wild rose that in beauty was blushing,
Fresh and sweet, by the side of the hot, dusty road.
Untrained were its branches, untended it flourished,
No eye watched its opening or mourned its decay;
But its leaves by the soft dews of heaven were nourished,
And it opened its buds in the warm light of day.
I asked why it grew there where none prized its beauty,
For of thousands who passed none had leisure to stay.
And the answer came sweetly, “I do but my duty;
I was told to grow here by the side of the way.”
There are those on life’s pathway whose spirits are willing
To dwell where the busy crowd passes them by;
But the dew from above on their leaves is distilling,
And they bloom ’neath the smile of the All-seeing Eye.
They are loved by the few—like the rose, they remind us,
When tempted from duty’s safe pathway to stray;
We, too, have a place and a mission assign’d us,
Though it be but to grow by the side of the way.
A Song for the Conquered.
I sing the Hymn of the Conquered, who fell in the battle of life;
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife.
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame.
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart,
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part;
Whose youth bore no flower in its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away;
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at; who stood at the dying of day
With the work of their life all around them, unpitied, unheeded, alone,
With death swooping down o’er their failure, and all but their faith overthrown.
While the voice of the world shouts its chorus,—its pæan for those who have won,—
While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the breeze and the sun
Gay banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet
Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand on the field of defeat,
In the shadow ’mongst those who are fallen, and wounded and dying, and there
Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain-knotted brows, breathe a prayer,
Hold the hand that is hapless, and whisper, “They only the victory win
Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the demon that tempts us within;
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high;
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight—if need be to die.”
Speak, History! Who are life’s victors? Unroll thy long annals, and say—
Are they those whom the world called the victors who won the success of the day?
The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at Thermopylæ’s tryst,
Or the Persians of Xerxes? His judges, or Socrates? Pilate, or Christ?
The Amen of the Rocks.
The Venerable Bede, with age grown blind,
till went abroad to preach the new evangel.
From town to town, village to village, journeyed
The saintly elder, with a lad for guide,
And preached the word with youthful zeal and fervor;
And once the lad led him along a vale,
All scattered o’er with mighty moss-grown bowlders.
More thoughtless than malicious quoth the urchin,
“Here, reverend father, many men have come,
And all the multitude await thy sermon.”
The blind old man stood upright at his speech,
And spake his text, explained it, thence digressed,
Exhorted, warned, reproved, and comforted,
So earnestly that tears of love and joy
Ran down his cheeks, and on his long gray beard;
Then, as was meet, he ended with “Our Father,
Thine is the kingdom, Thine the power, and Thine
The glory is forever and forever.”
Then came a thousand, thousand answering voices—
“Yea, reverend father, amen and amen.”
Then, terrified, the boy fell down repentant,
Confessing to the saint his ill behavior.
“Son,” said the holy man, “didst thou read never
That stones themselves shall cry if man is silent?
Play thou no more, my son, with things divine.
God’s word is powerful, and cuts more sharp
Than any two-edged sword. And if it be
That man toward the Lord is stony-hearted,
A human heart shall wake in stones, and witness.”