Books: Poems of Progress
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Ella Wheeler Wilcox >> Poems of Progress
ART THOU ALIVE?
Art thou alive? Nay, not too soon reply,
Tho' hand, and foot, and lip, and ear, and eye,
Respond, and do thy bidding yet may be
Grim death has done his direst work with thee.
Life, as God gives it, is a thing apart
From active body and from beating heart.
It is the vital spark, the unseen fire,
That moves the mind to reason and aspire;
It is the force that bids emotion roll,
In mighty billows from the surging soul.
It is the light that grows from hour to hour,
And floods the brain with consciousness of power;
It is the spirit dominating all,
And reaching God with its imperious call,
Until the shining glory of His face
Illuminates each sorrowful, dark place;
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.
In useless effort, then, waste no time;
Rebuild your ladder, and climb and climb.
WHO IS A CHRISTIAN?
Who is a Christian in this Christian land
Of many churches and of lofty spires?
Not he who sits in soft upholstered pews
Bought by the profits of unholy greed,
And looks devotion, while he thinks of gain.
Not he who sends petitions from the lips
That lie to-morrow in the street and mart.
Not he who fattens on another's toil,
And flings his unearned riches to the poor,
Or aids the heathen with a lessened wage,
And builds cathedrals with an increased rent.
Christ, with Thy great, sweet, simple creed of love,
How must Thou weary of Earth's 'Christian' clans,
Who preach salvation through Thy saving blood
While planning slaughter of their fellow men.
Who is a Christian? It is one whose life
Is built on love, on kindness and on faith;
Who holds his brother as his other self;
Who toils for justice, equity and PEACE,
And hides no aim or purpose in his heart
That will not chord with universal good.
Though he be pagan, heretic or Jew,
That man is Christian and beloved of Christ.
THE GOAL
All your wonderful inventions,
All your houses vast and tall,
All your great gun-fronted vessels,
Every fort and every wall,
With the passing of the ages,
They shall pass and they shall fall.
As you sit among the idols
That your avarice gave birth,
As you count the hoarded treasures
That you think of priceless worth,
Time is digging tombs to hide them
In the bosom of the earth.
There shall come a great convulsion
Or a rushing tidal wave,
Or a sound of mighty thunders
From a subterranean cave,
And a boasting world's possessions
Shall be buried in one grave.
From the Centuries of Silence
We are bringing back again
Buried vase and bust and column
And the gods they worshipped then,
In the strange unmentioned cities
Built by prehistoric men.
Did they steal, and lie, and slaughter?
Did they steep their souls in shame?
Did they sell eternal virtues
Just to win a passing fame?
Did they give the gold of honour
For the tinsel of a name?
We are hurrying all together
Toward the silence and the night;
There is nothing worth the seeking
But the sun-kissed moral height -
There is nothing worth the doing
But the doing of the RIGHT.
THE SPUR
I asked the rock beside the road what joy existence lent.
It answered, 'For a million years my heart has been content.'
I asked the truffle-seeking swine, as rooting by he went,
'What is the keynote of your life?' He grunted out, 'Content.'
I asked a slave, who toiled and sung, just what his singing meant.
He plodded on his changeless way, and said, 'I am content.'
I asked a plutocrat of greed, on what his thoughts were bent.
He chinked the silver in his purse, and said, 'I am content.'
I asked the mighty forest tree from whence its force was sent.
Its thousand branches spoke as one, and said, 'From discontent.'
I asked the message speeding on, by what great law was rent
God's secret from the waves of space. It said, 'From discontent.'
I asked the marble, where the works of God and man were blent,
What brought the statue from the block. It answered, 'Discontent.'
I asked an Angel, looking down on earth with gaze intent,
How man should rise to larger growth. Quoth he, 'Through
discontent.'
AWAKENED!
Slowly the People waken; they have been,
Like weary soldiers, sleeping in their tents,
While traitors tiptoed through the silent camp
Intent on plunder. Suddenly a sound -
A careless movement of too bold a thief -
Starts one dull sleeper; then another stirs,
A third cries out a warning, and at last
The people are awake! Oh, when as one
The many rise, united and alert,
With Justice for their motto, they reflect
The mighty force of God's Omnipotence.
And nothing stands before them. Lusty Greed,
Tyrannical Corruption long in power,
And smirking Cant (whose right hand robs and slays
So that the left may dower Church and School),
Monopoly, whose mandate took from Toil
The Mother Earth, that Idleness might loll
And breed the Monster of Colossal Wealth -
All these must fall before the gathering Force
Of public indignation. That old strife
Which marks the progress of each century,
The war of Right with Might, is on once more,
And shame to him who does not take his stand.
This is the weightiest moment of all time,
And on the issues of the present hour
A nation's honour and a country's peace,
A People's future, ay, a World's, depends.
Until the vital questions of the day
Are solved and settled, and the spendthrift thieves
Who rob the coffers of the saving poor
Are led from fashion's feasts to prison fare,
And taught the saving grace of honest work -
Till Labour claims the privilege of toil
And toil the proceeds of its labour shares -
Let no man sleep, let no man dare to sleep!
SHADOWS
I am sorry in the gladness
Of the joys that crown my days,
For the souls that sit in sadness
Or walk uninviting ways.
On the radiance of my labour
That a loving fate bestowed,
Falls the shadow of my neighbour,
Crushed beneath a thankless load.
As the canticle of pleasure
From my lovelit altar rolls,
There is one discordant measure,
As I think of homeless souls.
And I know that grim old story,
Preached from pulpits, is not so,
For no God could sit in glory
And see sinners writhe below.
In that great eternal Centre
Where all human life has birth,
Boundless love and pity enter
And flow downward to the earth.
And all souls in sin or sorrow
Are but passing through the night,
And I know on some to-morrow
God will love them into light.
THE NEW COMMANDMENT
'Let go the Cross'--GERTRUDE RUNSHON.
I heard a strange voice in the distance calling
As from a star an echo might be falling.
It spoke four syllables, concise and brief,
Charged with a God-sent message of relief:
Let go the cross! Oh, you who cling to sorrow,
Hark to the new command and comfort borrow.
Even as the Master left His cross below
And rose to Paradise, let go, let go.
Forget your wrongs, your troubles and your losses,
For with the tools of thought we build our crosses.
Forget your griefs, all grudges and all fear
And enter Paradise--its gates are near.
Heaven is a realm by loving souls created,
And hell was fashioned by the hearts that hated.
Love, hope and trust; believe all joys are yours,
Life pays the soul whose confidence endures,
The blows of adverse fate, by larger pleasures,
As after storms the soil yields fuller measures.
Let go the cross; roll self--the stone--away
And dwell with Love in Paradise to-day.
SUMMER DREAMS
When the Summer sun is shining,
And the green things push and grow,
Oft my heart runs over measure,
With its flowing fount of pleasure,
As I feel the sea winds blow;
Ah, then life is good, I know.
And I think of sweet birds building,
And of children fair and free;
And of glowing sun-kissed meadows,
And of tender twilight shadows,
And of boats upon the sea.
Oh, then life seems good to me!
Then unbidden and unwanted,
Come the darker, sadder sights;
City shop and stifling alley,
Where misfortune's children rally;
And the hot crime-breeding nights,
And the dearth of God's delights.
And I think of narrow prisons
Where unhappy songbirds dwell,
And of cruel pens and cages
Where some captured wild thing rages
Like a madman in his cell,
In the Zoo, the wild beasts' hell.
And I long to lift the burden
Of man's selfishness and sin;
And to open wide earth's treasures
Of God's storehouse, full of pleasures,
For my dumb and human kin,
And to ask the whole world in.
THE BREAKING OF CHAINS
Between the ringing of bells and the musical clang of chimes
I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, all through these
Christmas times.
For the thought of the world is waking out of a slumber deep and
long,
And the race is beginning to understand how Right can master Wrong.
And the eyes of the world are opening wide, and great are the truths
they see;
And the heart of the world is singing a song, and its burden is 'Be
free!'
Now the thought of the world and the wish of the world and the song
of the world will make
A force so strong that the fetters forged for a million years must
break.
Fetters of superstitious fear have bound the race to creeds
That hindered the upward march of man to the larger faith he needs.
Fetters of greed and pride have made the race bow down to kings;
But the pompous creed and the costly throne must yield to simpler
things.
The thought of the world has climbed above old paths for centuries
trod;
And cloth and crown no longer mean the 'vested power of God.'
The race no longer bends beneath the weight of Adam's sin,
But stands erect and knows itself the Maker's first of kin.
And the need of the world and the wish of the world and the song of
the world I hear,
All through the clanging and clashing of bells, this Christmas time
o' the year;
And I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, and it seems to say
to me,
In the voice of One who spoke of old, 'The Truth shall make men
free.'
DECEMBER
Upon December's windy portico
The Old Year stood, and looked out where the sun
Went wading down the West, through drifting clouds.
'I, too, shall sink full soon to rest,' he sighed,
'And follow where my children's feet have trod;
Brave January, beauteous May and June,
My lovely daughters, and my valiant sons,
All, all save one, have left me for that bourne
Men call the Past. It seems but yesterday
I saw fair August, laughing with the Sea,
Snaring the Earth with her seductive wiles,
And making conquest, even of the Sun.
Yet has she gone, and left me here to mourn.'
Then spake December, from an open door:
'Father, the night grows cold; come in and rest.
Sit with me here beside this glowing grate;
I have not left thee; thou art not alone;
My house is thine; all warm with love and light,
And bright with holly and with cedar sweet.
My stalwart arm is thine to lean upon;
The feast is spread, I only wait for thee;
God smiles upon thy dead, smile thou on me.'
Then through the open door the Old Year passed
And darkness settled on the outer world.
'THE WAY'
However certain of the way thou art,
Take not the self-appointed leader's part.
Follow no man, and by no man be led,
And no man lead. AWAKE, and go ahead.
Thy path, though leading straight unto the goal
Might prove confusing to another soul.
The goal is central; but from east, and west,
And north, and south, we set out on the quest;
From lofty mountains, and from valleys low:-
How could all find one common way to go?
Lord Buddha to the wilderness was brought.
Lord Jesus to the Cross. And yet, think not
By solitude, or cross, thou canst achieve,
Lest in thine own true Self thou dost believe.
Know thou art One, with life's Almighty Source,
Then are thy feet set on the certain Course.
Nor does it matter if thou feast, or fast,
Or what thy creed--or where thy lot is cast;
In halls of pleasure or in crowded mart,
In city streets, or from all men apart -
Thy path leads to the Light; and peace and power
Shall be thy portion, growing hour by hour.
Follow no man, and by no man be led.
And no man lead. But KNOW and go ahead.
THE LEADER TO BE
What shall the leader be in that great day
When we who sleep and dream that we are slaves
Shall wake and know that Liberty is ours?
Mark well that word--not yours, not mine, but ours.
For through the mingling of the separate streams
Of individual protest and desire,
In one united sea of purpose, lies
The course to Freedom.
When Progression takes
Her undisputed right of way, and sinks
The old traditions and conventions where
They may not rise, what shall the leader be?
No mighty warrior skilled in crafts of war,
Sowing earth's fertile furrows with dead men
And staining crimson God's cerulean sea,
To prove his prowess to a shuddering world.
Nor yet a monarch with a silly crown
Perched on an empty head, an in-bred heir
To senseless titles and anemic blood.
No ruler, purchased by the perjured votes
Of striving demagogues whose god is gold.
Not one of these shall lead to Liberty.
The weakness of the world cries out for strength.
The sorrow of the world cries out for hope.
Its suffering cries for kindness.
He who leads
Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn
That rises unafraid and full of joy
Above the blackness of the darkest night.
He must be kind to every living thing;
Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ,
And full of love for all created life.
Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie,
Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase.
Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast,
Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms
And bringing down to earth their mystic fires
To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind
And human to the core, so shall he be,
The coming leader of the coming time.
THE GREATER LOVE
Hear thou my prayer, great God of opulence;
Give me no blessings, save as recompense
For blessings which I lovingly bestow
On needy stranger or on suffering foe.
If Wealth, by chance, should on my path appear,
Let Wisdom and Benevolence stand near,
And Charity within my portal wait,
To guard me from acquaintance intimate.
Yet in this intricate great art of living
Guide me away from misdirected giving,
And show me how to spur the laggard soul
To strive alone once more to gain the goal.
Repay my worldly efforts to attain
Only as I develop heart and brain;
Nor brand me with the 'Dollar Sign' above
A bosom void of sympathy and love.
If on the carrying winds my name be blown
To any land or time beyond my own,
Let it not be as one who gained the day
By crowding others from the chosen way;
Rather as one who missed the highest place
Pausing to cheer spent runners in the race.
To do--to have--is lesser than to BE:
The greater boon I ask, dear God, from Thee.
THANK GOD FOR LIFE
Thank God for life, in such an age as this,
Rich with the promises of better things.
Thank God for being part of this great nation's heart,
Whose strong pulsations are not ruled by kings.
Our thanks for fearless and protesting speech
When cloven hoofs show 'neath the robes of state.
For us no servile song of 'Kings can do no wrong.'
Not royal birth, but worth, makes rulers great.
Thank God for peace within our border lands,
And for the love of peace within each soul.
Who thinks on peace has wrought, mosaic-squares of thought
In the foundation of our future goal.
Our thanks for love, and knowledge of love's laws.
Love is a greater power than vested might.
Love is the central source of all enduring force.
Love is the law that sets the whole world right.
Our thanks for that increasing torch of light
The tireless hand of science holds abroad.
And may its growing blaze shine on all hidden ways
Till man beholds the silhouette of God.
TIME ENOUGH
I know it is early morning,
And hope is calling aloud,
And your heart is afire with Youth's desire
To hurry along with the crowd.
But linger a bit by the roadside,
And lend a hand by the way,
'Tis a curious fact that a generous act
Brings leisure and luck to a day.
I know it is only the noontime -
There is chance enough to be kind;
But the hours run fast when noon has passed,
And the shadows are close behind.
So think while the light is shining,
And act ere the set of the sun,
For the sorriest woe that a soul can know
Is to think what it might have done.
I know it is almost evening,
But the twilight hour is long.
If you listen and heed each cry of need
You can right full many a wrong.
For when we have finished the journey
We will all look back and say:
'On life's long mile there was nothing worth while
But the good we did by the way.'
NEW YEAR'S DAY
When with clanging and with ringing
Comes the year's initial day,
I can feel the rhythmic swinging
Of the world upon its way;
And though Right still wears a fetter,
And though Justice still is blind,
Time's beyond is always better
Than the paths he leaves behind.
In our eons of existence,
As we circle through the night,
We annihilate the distance
'Twixt the darkness and the light.
From beginnings crude and lowly,
Round and round our souls have trod
Through the circles, winding slowly
Up to knowledge and to God.
With each century departed
Some old evil found a tomb,
Some old truth was newly started
In propitious soil to bloom.
With each epoch some condition
That has handicapped the race
(Worn-out creed or superstition)
Unto knowledge yields its place.
Though in folly and in blindness
And in sorrow still we grope,
Yet in man's increasing kindness
Lies the world's stupendous hope;
For our darkest hour of errors
Is as radiant as the dawn,
Set beside the awful terrors
Of the ages that have gone.
And above the sad world's sobbing,
And the strife of clan with clan,
I can hear the mighty throbbing
Of the heart of God in man;
And a voice chants through the chiming
Of the bells, and seems to say,
We are climbing, we are climbing,
As we circle on our way.
LIFE IS A PRIVILEGE
Life is a privilege. Its youthful days
Shine with the radiance of continuous Mays.
To live, to breathe, to wonder and desire,
To feed with dreams the heart's perpetual fire;
To thrill with virtuous passions and to glow
With great ambitions--in one hour to know
The depths and heights of feeling--God! in truth
How beautiful, how beautiful is youth!
Life is a privilege. Like some rare rose
The mysteries of the human mind unclose.
What marvels lie in earth and air and sea,
What stores of knowledge wait our opening key,
What sunny roads of happiness lead out
Beyond the realms of indolence and doubt,
And what large pleasures smile upon and bless
The busy avenues of usefulness.
Life is a privilege. Though noontide fades
And shadows fall along the winding glades;
Though joy-blooms wither in the autumn air,
Yet the sweet scent of sympathy is there.
Pale sorrow leads us closer to our kind,
And in the serious hours of life we find
Depths in the soul of men which lend new worth
And majesty to this brief span of earth.
Life is a privilege. If some sad fate
Sends us alone to seek the exit gate;
If men forsake us as the shadows fall,
Still does the supreme privilege of all
Come in that reaching upward of the soul
To find the welcoming presence at the goal,
And in the knowledge that our feet have trod
Paths that lead from and must lead back to God.
IN AN OLD ART GALLERY
Before the statue of a giant Hun,
There stood a dwarf, misshapen and uncouth.
His lifted eyes seemed asking: 'Why, in sooth,
Was I not fashioned like this mighty one?
Would God show favour to an older son
Like earthly kings, and beggar without ruth
Another, who sinned only by his youth?
Why should two lives in such divergence run?'
Strange, as he gazed, that from a vanished past
No memories revived of war and strife,
Of misused prowess, and of broken law.
That old Hun's spirit, in the dwarf re-cast,
Lived out the sequence of an earthly life.
IT WAS THE STATUE OF HIMSELF HE SAW!
TRUE BROTHERHOOD
God, what a world, if men in street and mart
Felt that same kinship of the human heart
Which makes them, in the face of flame and flood,
Rise to the meaning of true Brotherhood!
THE DECADENT
Among the virile hosts he passed along,
Conspicuous for an undetermined grace
Of sexless beauty. In his form and face
God's mighty purpose somehow had gone wrong.
Then on his loom, he wove a careful song,
Of sensuous threads; a wordy web of lace
Wherein the primal passions of the race
And his own sins made wonder for the throng.
A little pen prick opened up a vein,
And gave the finished mesh a crimson blot -
The last consummate touch of studied art.
But those who knew strong passion and keen pain,
Looked through and through the pattern and found not
One single great emotion of the heart.
LORD, SPEAK AGAIN
When God had formed the Universe, He thought
Of all the marvels therein to be wrought
And to His aid then Motherhood was brought.
'My lesser self, the feminine of Me,
She will go forth throughout all time,' quoth He,
'And make My world what I would have it be.
'For I am weary, having laboured so,
And for a cycle of repose would go
Into that silence which but God may know.
'Therefore I leave the rounding of My plan
To Motherhood; and that which I began
Let woman finish in perfecting man.
'She is the soil: the human Mother Earth:
She is the sun, that calls the seed to earth.
She is the gardener, who knows its worth.
'From Me, all seed, of any kind must spring.
Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring.
For all is Me, and I am everything.'
Thus having spoken to Himself aloud,
His glorious face upon His breast He bowed,
And sought repose behind a wall of cloud.
Come forth, O God! though great Thy thought and good,
In shaping woman for true Motherhood,
Lord, speak again; she has not understood.
The centuries pass: the cycles roll along -
The earth is peopled with a mighty throng,
Yet men are fighting and the world goes wrong.
Lord, speak again, ere yet it be too late,
Unloved, unwanted souls come through earth's gate:
The unborn child is given a dower of hate.
Thy world progresses in all ways save one.
In Motherhood, for which it was begun,
Lord, Lord, behold how little has been done!
Children are spawned like fishes in the sand.
With ignorance and crime they fill the land.
Lord, speak again, till mothers understand.
It is not all of Motherhood to know
Conception pleasure or deliverance woe.
Who plants the seed should help the shoot to grow.