Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul Part 19

TRUE GREATNESS

Who is as the Christian great?

Bought and washed with sacred blood, Crowns he sees beneath his feet.

Soars aloft and walks with G.o.d.

Lo, his clothing is the sun, The bright sun of righteousness; He hath put salvation on, Jesus is his beauteous dress.

Angels are his servants here; Spread for him their golden wings; To his throne of glory bear, Seat him by the King of kings.

--Charles Wesley.

The glory is not in the task, but in The doing it for Him.

--Jean Ingelow.

MENCIUS

Three centuries before the Christian age China's great teacher, Mencius, was born; Her teeming millions did not know that morn Had broken on her darkness; that a sage, Reared by a n.o.ble mother, would her page Of history forevermore adorn.

For twenty years, from court to court, forlorn He journeyed, poverty his heritage, And preached of virtue, but none cared to hear.

Life seemed a failure, like a barren rill; He wrote his books, and lay beneath the sod: When, lo! his work began; and far and near Adown the ages Mencius preaches still: Do thy whole duty, trusting all to G.o.d.

--Sarah Knowles Bolton.

He stood, the youth they called the Beautiful, At morning, on his untried battle-field, And laughed with joy to see his stainless shield, When, with a tender smile, but doubting sigh, His lord rode by.

When evening fell, they brought him, wounded sore, His battered shield with sword-thrusts gashed and rent, And laid him where the king stood by his tent.

"Now art thou Beautiful," the master said, And bared his head.

--Annie M. L. Hawes.

Great men grow greater by the lapse of time; We know those least whom we have seen the latest; And they, 'mongst those whose names have grown sublime, Who worked for human liberty are greatest.

--John Boyle O'Reilly.

It is enough-- Enough--just to be good; To lift our hearts where they are understood; To let the thirst for worldly power and place Go unappeased; to smile back in G.o.d's face With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.

Ah! though we miss All else but this, To be good is enough!

--James Whitcomb Riley.

He who ascends to mountain tops shall find Their loftiest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow; He who surpa.s.ses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.

Though high above the sun of glory glow, And far beneath the earth and ocean spread, Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow Contending tempests on his naked head.

--George Gordon Byron.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.

--William Shakespeare.

That man may last, but never lives, Who much receives but nothing gives; Whom none can love, whom none can thank; Creation's blot; creation's blank!

But he who marks, from day to day, In generous acts his radiant way Treads the same path his Saviour trod: The path to glory and to G.o.d.

The eye with seeing is not filled, The ear with hearing not at rest; Desire with having is not stilled, With human praise no heart is blest.

Vanity, then, of vanities, All things for which men grasp and grope!

The precious things in heavenly eyes Are love, and truth, and trust, and hope.

A gem which falls within the mire will still a gem remain; Men's eyes turn downward to the earth and search for it with pain.

But _dust_, though whirled aloft to heaven, continues dust alway, More base and noxious in the air than when on earth it lay.

--Saadi, tr. by James Freeman Clarke.

It was not anything she said; It was not anything she did; It was the movement of her head, The lifting of her lid.

And as she trod her path aright Power from her very garments stole; For such is the mysterious might G.o.d grants a n.o.ble soul.

True worth is in being, not seeming; In doing, each day that goes by, Some little good, not in dreaming, Of great things to do by and by.

For whatever men say in their blindness, And spite of the fancies of youth, There's nothing so kingly as kindness, And nothing so royal as truth.

--Alice Cary.

The wisest man could ask no more of Fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the Many, honored by the Few; To count as naught in world of church or state But inwardly in secret to be great.

--James Russell Lowell.

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees it, for the G.o.d of Things as they are.

--Rudyard Kipling.

In life's small things be resolute and great To keep thy muscle trained; knowest thou when Fate Thy measure takes? or when she'll say to thee, "I find thee worthy; do this deed for me"?

--James Russell Lowell.