Poems Teachers Ask For Volume I Part 40

Down all the stretch of h.e.l.l to its last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More fraught with menace to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!

Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?

What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the judges of the world, A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to G.o.d, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?

How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light, Rebuild it in the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the Future reckon with this man?

How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?

How will it be with kingdom and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall reply to G.o.d, After the silence of the centuries?

_Edwin Markham._

Poorhouse Nan

Did you say you wished to see me, sir? Step in; 'tis a cheerless place, But you're heartily welcome all the same; to be poor is no disgrace.

Have I been here long? Oh, yes, sir! 'tis thirty winters gone Since poor Jim took to crooked ways and left me all alone!

Jim was my son, and a likelier lad you'd never wish to see, Till evil counsels won his heart and led him away from me.

'Tis the old, sad, pitiful story, sir, of the devil's winding stair, And men go down--and down--and down--to blackness and despair; Tossing about like wrecks at sea, with helm and anchor lost, On and on, through the surging waves, nor caring to count the cost; I doubt sometimes if the Savior sees, He seems so far away, How the souls He loved and died for, are drifting--drifting astray!

Indeed,'tis little wonder, sir, if woman shrinks and cries When the life-blood on Rum's altar spilled is calling to the skies; Small wonder if her own heart feels each sacrificial blow, For isn't each life a part of hers? each pain her hurt and woe?

Read all the records of crime and shame--'tis bitterly, sadly true; Where manliness and honor die, there some woman's heart dies, too.

I often think, when I hear folks talk so prettily and so fine Of "alcohol as needful food"; of the "moderate use of wine"; How "the world couldn't do without it, there was clearly no other way But for a man to drink, or let it alone, as his own strong will might say"; That "to use it, but not abuse it, was the proper thing to do,"

How I wish they'd let old Poorhouse Nan preach her little sermon, too!

I would give them scenes in a woman's life that would make their pulses stir, For I was a drunkard's child and wife--aye, a drunkard's mother, sir!

I would tell of childish terrors, of childish tears and pain.

Of cruel blows from a father's hand when rum had crazed his brain; He always said he could drink his fill, or let it alone as well; Perhaps he might, he was killed one night in a brawl--in a grog-shop h.e.l.l!

I would tell of years of loveless toil the drunkard's child had pa.s.sed, With just one gleam of sunshine, too beautiful to last.

When I married Tom I thought for sure I had nothing more to fear, That life would come all right at last; the world seemed full of cheer.

But he took to moderate drinking--he allowed 'twas a harmless thing, So the arrow sped, and my bird of Hope came down with a broken wing.

Tom was only a moderate drinker; ah, sir, do you bear in mind How the plodding tortoise in the race left the leaping hare behind?

'Twas because he held right on and on, steady and true, if slow, And that's the way, I'm thinking, that the moderate drinkers go!

Step over step--day after day--with sleepless, tireless pace, While the toper sometimes looks behind and tarries in the race!

Ah, heavily in the well-worn path poor Tom walked day by day, For my heart-strings clung about his feet and tangled up the way; The days were dark, and friends were gone, and life dragged on full slow, And children came, like reapers, and to a harvest of want and woe!

Two of them died, and I was glad when they lay before me dead; I had grown so weary of their cries--their pitiful cries for bread.

There came a time when my heart was stone; I could neither hope nor pray; Poor Tom lay out in the Potter's Field, and my boy had gone astray; My boy who'd been my idol, while, like hound athirst for blood, Between my breaking heart and him the liquor seller stood, And lured him on with pleasant words, his pleasures and his wine; Ah, G.o.d have pity on other hearts as bruised and hurt as mine.

There were whispers of evil-doing, of dishonor, and of shame, That I cannot bear to think of now, and would not dare to name!

There was hiding away from the light of day, there was creeping about at night, A hurried word of parting--then a criminal's stealthy flight!

His lips were white with remorse and fright when he gave me a good-by kiss; And I've never seen my poor lost boy from that black day to this.

Ah, none but a mother can tell you, sir, how a mother's heart will ache, With the sorrow that comes of a sinning child, with grief for a lost one's sake, When she knows the feet she trained to walk have gone so far astray, And the lips grown bold with curses that she taught to sing and pray; A child may fear--a wife may weep, but of all sad things, none other Seems half so sorrowful to me as being a drunkard's mother.

They tell me that down in the vilest dens of the city's crime and murk, There are men with the hearts of angels, doing the angels' work; That they win back the lost and the straying, that they help the weak to stand, By the wonderful power of loving words--and the help of G.o.d's right hand!

And often and often, the dear Lord knows, I've knelt and prayed to Him, That somewhere, somehow, 'twould happen that they'd find and save my Jim!

You'll say 'tis a poor old woman's whim; but when I prayed last night, Right over yon eastern window there shone a wonderful light!

(Leastways it looked that way to me) and out of the light there fell The softest voice I had ever heard: it rung like a silver bell; And these were the words, "The prodigal turns, so tired by want and sin, He seeks his father's open door--he weeps--and enters in."

Why, sir, you're crying as hard as I; what--is it really done?

Have the loving voice and the Helping Hand brought back my wandering son?

Did you kiss me and call me "Mother"--and hold me to your breast, Or is it one of the taunting dreams that come to mock my rest?

No--no! thank G.o.d, 'tis a dream come true! I can die, for He's saved my boy!

And the poor old heart that had lived on grief was broken at last by joy!

_Lucy M. Blinn._

Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud!

Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud!

Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, He pa.s.ses from life to his rest in the grave.

The leaves of the oak and the willows shall fade, Be scattered around, and together be laid; And the young and the old, and the low and the high Shall moulder to dust, and together shall die.

The child whom a mother attended and loved, The mother that infant's affection who proved, The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Each--all are away to their dwelling of rest.

The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye Shone beauty and pleasure--her triumphs are by; And the memory of those who loved her and praised Are alike from the minds of the living erased.

The hand of the king who the scepter hath borne, The brow of the priest who the mitre hath worn, The eye of the sage and the heart of the brave Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave.

The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, The beggar who wandered in search of his bread Have faded away like the gra.s.s that we tread.

The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven, The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.

So the mult.i.tude goes--like the flower and the weed That wither away to let others succeed; So the mult.i.tude comes--even those we behold, To repeat every tale that has often been told.

For we are the same things that our fathers have been, We see the same sights that our fathers have seen; We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, And we run the same course that our fathers have run.

The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think, From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink, To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling, But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing.

They loved--but their story we cannot enfold, They scorned--but the heart of the haughty is cold, They grieved--but no wail from their slumbers may come, They joy'd--but the voice of their gladness--is dumb.