I know the need of the world,
When it boasts of its wealth the loudest,
When it flaunts it in all men’s eyes,
When its mien is the gayest and proudest.
Oh! ever it lies—it lies,
For the sound of its laughter dies
In a sob and a smothered moan,
And it weeps when it sits alone.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When the earth shakes under the tread
Of men who march to the fight,
When rivers with blood are red
And there is no law but might,
And the wrong way seems the right;
When he who slaughters the most
Is all men’s pride and boast.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When it babbles of gold and fame,
It is only to lead us astray
From the thing that it dare not name,
For this is the sad world’s way.
Oh! poor blind world grown grey
With the need of a thing so near,
With the want of a thing so dear.
The need of the world I know.
The need of the world is love.
Deep under the pride of power,
Down under its lust of greed,
For the joys that last but an hour,
There lies forever its need.
For love is the law and the creed
And love is the unnamed goal
Of life, from man to the mole.
Love is the need of the world.
THE GULF STREAM
Skilled mariner, and counted sane and wise,
That was a curious thing which chanced to me,
So good a sailor on so fair a sea.
With favouring winds and blue unshadowed skies,
Led by the faithful beacon of Love’s eyes,
Past reef and shoal, my life-boat bounded free
And fearless of all changes that might be
Under calm waves, where many a sunk rock lies.
A golden dawn; yet suddenly my barque
Strained at the sails, as in a cyclone’s blast;
And battled with an unseen current’s force,
For we had entered when the night was dark
That old tempestuous Gulf Stream of the Past.
But for love’s eyes, I had not kept the course.
REMEMBERED
His art was loving; Eres set his sign
Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew
The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.
Love feeds love’s thirst as wine feeds love of wine;
Nor is there any potion from the vine
Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew
Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew
Inebriated with that draught divine.
Yet in his sober moments, when the sun
Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,
And passion’s sea had grown an ebbing tide,
From out the many, Memory singled one
Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all—
The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.