It is not mine to hoard;
It stands there to afford
Its generous service simply as a flower.
The poem then broadens into a dissertation upon the complexities of life, one’s servitude to custom and “vested wrong,” the lack of individual courage to
Live by the truth each one of us believes,
and turns, for illustration of the nobler development and poise, back to nature, and the evolutionary round of life through which one traces his course and kinship. These stanzas are among the finest spoken by the wise
Brother of the Word. After citing the strength and serenity of the fir-trees, and what a travesty upon man’s ascent it were, did one bear himself less royally than they, he adverts to the creature kin-fellows whose lot we have borne:
I, too, in polar night
Have hungered, gaunt and white,
Alone amid the awful silences;