Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul

by Unknown

HUMILITY

O humble me! I cannot bide the joy

That in my Saviour's presence ever flows;

May I be lowly, lest it may destroy

The peace his childlike spirit ever knows.

I would not speak thy word, but by thee stand

While thou dost to thine erring children speak;

O help me but to keep his own command,

And in my strength to feel me ever weak;

Then in thy presence shall I humbly stay,

Nor lose the life of love he came to give;

And find at last the life, the truth, the way

To where with him thy blessed servants live;

And walk forever in the path of truth—

A servant, yet a son; a sire and yet a youth.

—Jones Very.

———

TURN FROM SELF

This is the highest learning,

The hardest and the best—

From self to keep still turning,

And honor all the rest.

If one should break the letter,

Yea, spirit of command,

Think not that thou art better;

Thou may'st not always stand!

We all are weak—but weaker

Hold no one than thou art;

Then, as thou growest meeker,

Higher will go thy heart.

—George Macdonald.

———

In proud humility a pious man went through the field;

The ears of corn were bowing in the wind, as if they kneeled;

He struck them on the head, and modestly began to say,

"Unto the Lord, not unto me, such honors should you pay."

—From the Persian.

———

MEEKNESS OF MOSES

Moses, the patriot fierce, became

The meekest man on earth,

To show us how love's quickening flame

Can give our souls new birth.

Moses, the man of meekest heart,

Lost Canaan by self-will,

To show, where grace has done its part,

How sin defiles us still.

Thou who hast taught me in thy fear,

Yet seest me frail at best,

Oh, grant me loss with Moses here,

To gain his future rest.

—John Henry Newman.

———

LAUS DEO

Let praise devote thy work, and skill employ

Thy whole mind, and thy heart be lost in joy.

Well-doing bringeth pride; this constant thought

Humility, that thy best done is naught.

Man doeth nothing well, be it great or small,

Save to praise God; but that hath savèd all.

For God requires no more than thou hast done,

And takes thy work to bless it for his own.

—Robert Bridges.

———

"A commonplace life," we say, and we sigh;

But why should we sigh as we say?

The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky

Makes up the commonplace day.

The moon and the stars are commonplace things,

And the flower that blooms and the bird that sings,

But dark were the world and sad our lot

If the flowers failed and the sun shone not;

And God, who studies each separate soul

Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole.

———

Humility, that low, sweet root

From which all heavenly virtues shoot.

—Thomas Moore.

———

THE EVERLASTING MEMORIAL

Up and away, like the dew of the morning

That soars from the earth to its home in the sun,

So let me steal away, gently and lovingly,

Only remembered by what I have done.

My name, and my place, and my tomb all forgotten,

The brief race of time well and patiently run,

So let me pass away, peacefully, silently,

Only remembered by what I have done.

Gladly away from this toil would I hasten,

Up to the crown that for me has been won;

Unthought of by man in rewards or in praises;

Only remembered by what I have done.

Up and away, like the odors of sunset,

That sweeten the twilight as evening comes on,

So be my life—a thing felt but not noticed,—

And I but remembered by what I have done.

Yes, like the fragrance that wanders in freshness

When the flowers that it came from are closed up and gone.

So would I be to this world's weary dwellers

Only remembered by what I have done.

I need not be missed, if my life has been bearing

(As its summer and autumn move silently on)

The bloom, and the fruit, and the seed of its season;

I shall still be remembered by what I have done.

Needs there the praise of the love-written record,

The name and the epitaph graved on the stone?

The things we have lived for—let them be our story—

We ourselves but remembered by what we have done.

I need not be missed if another succeed me,

To reap down the fields which in spring I have sown;

He who plowed and who sowed is not missed by the reaper,

He is only remembered by what he has done.

Not myself, but the truth that in life I have spoken,

Not myself, but the seed that in life I have sown,

Shall pass on to ages—all about me forgotten,

Save the truth I have spoken, the things I have done.

So let my living be, so be my dying;

So let my name lie, unblazoned, unknown;

Unpraised and unmissed, I shall still be remembered;

Yes, but remembered for what I have done.

—Horatius Bonar.

———

SELF

O I could go through all life's troubles singing,

Turning earth's night to day,

If self were not so fast around me clinging,

To all I do or say.

O Lord! that I could waste my life for others,

With no ends of my own,

That I could pour myself into my brothers

And live for them alone!

Such was the life thou livedst; self-abjuring,

Thine own pains never easing,

Our burdens bearing, our just doom enduring;

A life without self-pleasing.

—Frederick William Faber.

———

BRINGING OUR SHEAVES WITH US

The time for toil is past, and night has come—

The last and saddest of the harvest eves;

Worn out with labor, long and wearisome,

Drooping and faint, the reapers hasten home,

Each laden with his sheaves.

Last of the laborers, thy feet I gain,

Lord of the harvest! and my spirit grieves

That I am burdened not so much with grain

As with a heaviness of heart and brain;

Master, behold my sheaves.

Few, light, and worthless—yet their trifling weight

Through all my frame a weary aching leaves;

For long I struggled with my hapless fate,

And stayed and toiled till it was dark and late—

Yet these are all my sheaves.

Full well I know I have more tares than wheat,

Brambles and flowers, dry stalks and withered leaves;

Wherefore I blush and weep as at thy feet

I kneel down reverently and repeat,

"Master, behold my sheaves!"

I know these blossoms clustering heavily,

With evening dew upon their folded leaves,

Can claim no value or utility—

Therefore shall fragrancy and beauty be

The glory of my sheaves.

So do I gather strength and hope anew;

For well I know thy patient love perceives

Not what I did, but what I strove to do,

And though the full ripe ears be sadly few

Thou wilt accept my sheaves.

—Elizabeth Akers.

———

I pray not that

Men tremble at

My power of place,

And lordly sway;

I only pray for simple grace

To look my neighbor in the face

Full honestly from day to day.

—James Whitcomb Riley.

———

If thou art blest,

Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest

On the dark edges of each cloud that lies

Black in thy brother's skies.

If thou art sad,

Still be in thy brother's gladness glad.

—Hamilton.

———

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,

I should know what God and man is.

—Alfred Tennyson.

———

Praise not thy work, but let thy work praise thee;

For deeds, not words, make each man's memory stable.

If what thou dost is good, its good all men will see;

Musk by its smell is known, not by its label.

———

When thou art fain to trace a map of thine own heart,

An undiscovered land set down the largest part.

—Richard Chenevix Trench.

———

Patient, resigned and humble wills

Impregnably resist all ills.

—Thomas Ken.

———

He is one to whom

Long patience hath such mild composure given,

That patience now doth seem a thing of which

He hath no need.

—William Wordsworth.

———

Be not too ready to condemn

The wrong thy brothers may have done:

Ere ye too harshly censure them

For human faults, ask, "Have I none?"

—Eliza Cook.

———

Search thine own heart. What paineth thee

In others in thyself may be;

All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;

Be thou the true man thou dost seek.

—John Greenleaf Whittier.

———

Through wish, resolve, and act, our will

Is moved by undreamed forces still;

And no man measures in advance

His strength with untried circumstance.

—John Greenleaf Whittier.

———

Labor with what zeal we will,

Something still remains undone.

Something uncompleted still

Waits the rising of the sun.

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

———

In the deed that no man knoweth,

Where no praiseful trumpet bloweth,

Where he may not reap who soweth,

There, Lord, let my heart serve thee.

———

O wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion.

—Robert Burns.

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