II FAILURE
We are the wasters, who have no
Hope in this world here, neither fame,
Because we cannot collar low
Nor write a strange dead tongue the same
As strange dead men did long ago.
We are the weary, who begin
The race with joy, but early fail,
Because we do not care to win
A race that goes not to the frail
And humble: only the proud come in.
We are the shadow-forms, who pass
Unheeded hence from work and play.
We are to-day, but like the grass
That to-day is, we pass away;
And no one stops to say ‘Alas!’
Though we have little, all we have
We give our School. And no return
We can expect for what we gave;
No joys; only a summons stern,
“Depart, for others entrance crave!”
As soon as she can clearly prove
That from us is no hope of gain,
Because we only bring her love
And cannot bring her strength or brain.
She tells us, “Go: it is enough.”
She turns us out at seventeen,
We may not know her any more,
And all our life with her has been
A life of seeing others score,
While we sink lower and are mean.
We have seen others reap success
Full-measure. None has come to us.
Our life has been one failure. Yes,
But does not God prefer it thus?
God does not also praise success.
And for each failure that we meet,
And for each place we drop behind,
Each toil that holds our aching feet,
Each star we seek and never find,
God, knowing, gives us comfort meet.
The School we care for has not cared
To cherish nor keep our names to be
Memorials. God hath prepared
Some better thing for us, for we
His hopes have known, His failures shared.
November 1912
XXXV
PEACE
THERE is silence in the evening when the long days cease,
And a million men are praying for an ultimate release
From strife and sweat and sorrow—they are praying for peace.
But God is marching on.
Peace for a people that is striving to be free!
Peace for the children of the wild wet sea!
Peace for the seekers of the promised land—do we
Want peace when God has none?
We pray for rest and beauty that we know we cannot earn,
And ever are we asking for a honey-sweet return;
But God will make it bitter, make it bitter, till we learn
That with tears the race is run.
And did not Jesus perish to bring to men, not peace,
But a sword, a sword for battle and a sword that should not cease?
Two thousand years have passed us. Do we still want peace
Where the sword of Christ has shone?
Yes, Christ perished to present us with a sword,
That strife should be our portion and more strife our reward,
For toil and tribulation and the glory of the Lord
And the sword of Christ are one.
If you want to know the beauty of the thing called rest,
Go, get it from the poets, who will tell you it is best
(And their words are sweet as honey) to lie flat upon your chest
And sleep till life is gone.
I know that there is beauty where the low streams run,
And the weeping of the willows and the big sunk sun,
But I know my work is doing and it never shall be done,
Though I march for ages on.
Wild is the tumult of the long grey street,
O, is it never silent from the tramping of their feet?
Here, Jesus, is Thy triumph, and here the world’s defeat
For from here all peace has gone.
There’s a stranger thing than beauty in the ceaseless city’s breast,
In the throbbing of its fever—and the wind is in the west,
And the rain is driving forward where there is no rest,
For the Lord is marching on.
December 1912
XXXVI
THE RIVER
HE watched the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky;
It did not pause upon its track
Of silent instancy.
It did not hasten, nor was slack,
But still went gliding by.
It was so black. There was no wind
Its patience to defy.
It was not that the man had sinned,
Or that he wished to die.
Only the wide and silent tide
Went slowly sweeping by.
The mass of blackness moving down
Filled full of dreams the eye;
The lights of all the lighted town
Upon its breast did lie.
The tall black trees were upside down
In the river’s phantasy.
He had an envy for its black
Inscrutability;
He felt impatiently the lack
Of that great law whereby
The river never travels back
But still goes gliding by;
But still goes gliding by, nor clings
To passing things that die,
Nor shows the secrets that it brings
From its strange source on high.
And he felt “We are two living things
And the weaker one is I.”
He saw the town, that living stack
Piled up against the sky.
He saw the river running black
On, on and on: O, why
Could he not move along his track
With such consistency?
He had a yearning for the strength
That comes of unity:
The union of one soul at length
With its twin-soul to lie;
To be a part of one great strength
That moves and cannot die.
* * * * * *
He watched the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky.
He pulled his coat about his back,
He did not strive nor cry.
He put his foot upon the track
That still went gliding by
The thing that never travels back
Received him silently.
And there was left no shred, no wrack
To show the reason why:
Only the river running black
Beneath the blacker sky.
February 1913
XXXVII
THE SEEKERS
THE gates are open on the road
That leads to beauty and to God.
Perhaps the gates are not so fair,
Nor quite so bright as once they were,
When God Himself on earth did stand
And gave to Abraham His hand
And led him to a better land.
For lo! the unclean walk therein,
And those that have been soiled with sin.
The publican and harlot pass
Along: they do not stain its grass.
In it the needy has his share,
In it the foolish do not err.
Yes, spurned and fool and sinner stray
Along the highway and the way.
And what if all its ways are trod
By those whom sin brings near to God?
This journey soon will make them clean:
Their faith is greater than their sin.
For still they travel slowly by
Beneath the promise of the sky,
Scorned and rejected utterly;
Unhonoured; things of little worth
Upon the highroads of this earth;
Afflicted, destitute and weak:
Nor find the beauty that they seek,
The God they set their trust upon:
—Yet still they march rejoicing on.
March 1913
