When I heard you who had heard it—that first song—perhaps in dreaming, Till it filled you with fine fervour and the hopes of its refrain; And I knew that God was gracious and had led me in the gleaming Of a song-shine that is holy and that quiets all my pain.
Though the birds sing in the meadows and fill all the air with sweetness, They sing only in the present, and they sing because they must; They are wanton in their pureness, and in all their fine completeness, They trill out their lives forgotten to the silence of the dust.
But if you should pass to-morrow where your songs could never reach us,
There would still be throbbing through us all the music of your voice;
And your spirit would speak through the chords, as though it would
beseech us
To remember that the noblest ends have ever noblest choice.
NEVERTHELESS
In your onward march, O men,
White of face, in promise whiter,
You unsheathe the sword, and then
Blame the wronged as the fighter.
Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o’er
All these foetid fields of evil,
While hard at the nation’s core
Eat the burning rust and weevil!
Nathless, out beyond the stars
Reigns the Wiser and the Stronger,
Seeing in all strifes and wars
Who the wronged, who the wronger.
ISHMAEL
“No man cared for my soul.”
Blind, Lord, so blind! I wander far
From Thee among the haunts of men,
Most like some lone, faint, flickering star
Gone from its place, nor knoweth when
The sun shall give it shining dole
Lord! no man careth for my soul.
Blind, Lord, so blind! In loneliness
By crowded mart or busy street,
I fold my hands and feel how less
Am I to any one I meet,
Than to Thee one lost billow’s roll:
Lord! no man careth for my soul.
Blind, Lord, so blind! And I have knelt
‘Mong myriads in Thy house of prayer;
And still sad desolation felt,
Though heavy freighted was the air
With litanies of love: one ghoul
Cried, “No man careth for thy soul!”
Blind, Lord, so blind! The world is blind;
It feeds me, fainting, with a stone:
I cry for bread. Before, behind,
Are hurrying feet; yet all alone
I walk, and no one points the goal
Lord! no man careth for my soul.
Blind, Lord, Oh very blind am I!
If sin of mine sets up the wall
Between my poor sight and Thy sky,
O Friend of man, Who cares for all,
Send sweet peace ere the last bell toll—
Yea, Lord, Thou carest for my soul!