It is the truth that sets the bondsman free,
Knowing he will be what he wills to be.
With its unburied dead the earth is sad.
Art thou alive? proclaim it and be glad.
Perchance the dead may hear thee and arise,
Knowing they live, and here is Paradise.
TO-DAY
I love this age of energy and force,
Expectantly I greet each pregnant hour;
Emerging from the all-creative source,
Supreme with promise, imminent with power.
The strident whistle and the clanging bell,
The noise of gongs, the rush of motored things
Are but the prophet voices which foretell
A time when thought may use unfettered wings.
Too long the drudgery of earth has been
A barrier ’twixt man and his own mind.
Remove the stone, and lo! the Christ within;
For He is there, and who so seeks shall find.
The Great Inventor is the Modern Priest.
He paves the pathway to a higher goal.
Once from the grind of endless toil released
Man will explore the kingdom of his soul.
And all this restless rush, this strain and strife,
This noise and glare is but the fanfarade
That ushers in the more majestic life
Where faith shall walk with science, unafraid.
I feel the strong vibrations of the earth,
I sense the coming of an hour sublime,
And bless the star that watched above my birth
And let me live in this important time.
THE LADDER
Unto each mortal who comes to earth
A ladder is given by God, at birth,
And up this ladder the soul must go,
Step by step, from the valley below;
Step by step, to the centre of space,
On this ladder of lives, to the Starting Place.
In time departed (which yet endures)
I shaped my ladder, and you shaped yours.
Whatever they are—they are what we made:
A ladder of light, or a ladder of shade,
A ladder of love, or a hateful thing,
A ladder of strength, or a wavering string.
A ladder of gold, or a ladder of straw,
Each is the ladder of righteous law.
We flung them away at the call of death,
We took them again with the next life breath.
For a keeper stands by the great birth gates;
As each soul passes, its ladder waits.
Though mine be narrow, and yours be broad,
On my ladder alone can I climb to God.
On your ladder alone can your feet ascend,
For none may borrow, and none may lend.
If toil and trouble and pain are found,
Twisted and corded, to form each round,
If rusted iron or mouldering wood
Is the fragile frame, you must make it good.
You must build it over and fashion it strong,
Though the task be hard as your life is long;
For up this ladder the pathway leads
To earthly pleasures and spirit needs;
And all that may come in another way
Shall be but illusion, and will not stay.