Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. Various

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SERVICE

       Table of Contents

USEFULNESS, BENEVOLENCE, LABOR

       Table of Contents

      WAKING

      I have done at length with dreaming;

      Henceforth, O thou soul of mine!

      Thou must take up sword and buckler,

      Waging warfare most divine.

      Life is struggle, combat, victory!

      Wherefore have I slumbered on

      With my forces all unmarshaled,

      With my weapons all undrawn?

      O how many a glorious record

      Had the angels of me kept

      Had I done instead of doubted,

      Had I warred instead of wept!

      But begone, regret, bewailing!

      Ye had weakened at the best;

      I have tried the trusty weapons

      Resting erst within my breast.

      I have wakened to my duty,

      To a knowledge strong and deep,

      That I recked not of aforetime,

      In my long inglorious sleep.

      For the end of life is service,

      And I felt it not before,

      And I dreamed not how stupendous

      Was the meaning that it bore.

      In this subtle sense of being,

      Newly stirred in every vein,

      I can feel a throb electric—

      Pleasure half allied with pain.

      'Tis so sweet, and yet so awful,

      So bewildering, yet brave,

      To be king in every conflict

      Where before I crouched a slave!

      'Tis so glorious to be conscious

      Of a growing power within

      Stronger than the rallying forces

      Of a charged and marshaled sin!

      Never in those old romances

      Felt I half the thrill of life

      That I feel within me stirring,

      Standing in this place of strife.

      O those olden days of dalliance,

      When I wantoned with my fate;

      When I trifled with the knowledge

      That had well-nigh come too late.

      Yet, my soul, look not behind thee;

      Thou hast work to do at last;

      Let the brave toil of the present

      Overarch the crumbling past.

      Build thy great acts high and higher;

      Build them on the conquered sod

      Where thy weakness first fell bleeding,

      And thy first prayer rose to God.

      —Caroline Atherton Mason.

      ———

      SMALL BEGINNINGS

      A traveler through a dusty road strewed acorns on the lea;

      And one took root and sprouted up, and grew into a tree.

      Love sought its shade, at evening time, to breathe its early vows;

      And age was pleased, in heat of noon, to bask beneath its boughs;

      The dormouse loved its dangling twigs the birds sweet music bore;

      It stood a glory in its place, a blessing evermore.

      A little spring had lost its way amid the grass and fern,

      A passing stranger scooped a well where weary men might turn;

      He walled it in, and hung with care a ladle at the brink;

      He thought not of the deed he did, but judged that toil might drink.

      He passed again, and lo! the well, by summers never dried,

      Had cooled ten thousand parching tongues, and saved a life beside.

      A dreamer dropped a random thought; 'twas old, and yet 'twas new;

      A simple fancy of the brain, but strong in being true.

      It shone upon a genial mind, and lo! its light became

      A lamp of life, a beacon ray, a monitory flame.

      The thought was small; its issue great; a watchfire on the hill,

      It shed its radiance far adown, and cheers the valley still!

      A nameless man, amid the crowd that thronged the daily mart,

      Let fall a word of Hope and Love, unstudied, from the heart;

      A whisper on the tumult thrown—a transitory breath—

      It raised a brother from the dust; it saved a soul from death.

      O germ! O fount! O word of love! O thought at random cast!

      Ye were but little at the first, but mighty at the last!

      —Charles Mackay.

      ———

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