Sparrows.
Adeline D. T. Whitney.
Little birds sit on the telegraph wires,
And chitter and flitter and fold their wings.
Maybe they think that for them and their sires
Stretched always on purpose, those wonderful strings;
And perhaps the thought that the world inspires
Did plan for the birds among other things.
Little birds sit on the slender lines,
And the news of the world runs under their feet:
How value rises and now declines,
How kings with their armies in battle meet;
And all the while, ’mid the soundless signs,
They chirp their small gossipings, foolish and sweet.
Little things light on the lines of our lives—
Hopes and joys and acts of to-day;
And we think that for these the Lord contrives,
Nor catch what the hidden lightnings say;
Yet from end to end his meaning arrives,
And his word runs underneath all the way.
Is life only wires and lightning, then,
Apart from that which about it clings?
Are the thoughts and the works and the prayers of men
Only sparrows that light on God’s telegraph strings—
Holding a moment and gone again?
Nay: he planned for the birds with the larger things!
But, above all, where thou findest ignorance, stupidity, brute-mindedness—attack it, I say; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and rest not while thou livest and it lives; but smite, smite in the name of God! The highest God, as I understand it, does audibly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with his unspoken voice, is fuller than any Sinai thunders, or syllabled speech of whirlwinds; for the silence of deep eternities, of worlds beyond the morning stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn ages; the old graves, with their long moldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry—do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all space and all time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.—Thomas Carlyle.