Classic Poem

How long, O God, shall the great life stand waiting
While greedy wolves devour the tender child?
Shall lust consume till every heart is hating
Its own enchainment to a corse defiled?
Must youth forever glut a minotaur
Of greed more tyrannous than war?

Our spirit armour dimmed, our aims defeated,
Shall we like poltroons pander to the foe?
The cause shall prosper when, our ranks completed,
We rise as one and to the battle go,
Nor cease till every human life respond
With wholesome vision of the bright beyond.

Reject her—woman of eternal sorrows—
And our humanity shall stagger on
Down darkling roads of turbulent to-morrows
To fail at last when every hope is gone;
But would our souls be worthy to be free
And reach their portals of high destiny,

Make marriage just to woman; then far higher,
As queen of life, its source, its wing, its soul;
Set her on peaks of life and glorify her;
Make her with man its purpose and its goal,
The harp on which the ear of Heaven lingers
When touched to song by Love's harmonious fingers.

Then all the chivalry that lights the story
Of valour and romance in ages past,
The sacrifice that crowns our race with glory,
The spell that legend over life has cast,
Shall strive with reason and the word of Him
Whose eyes are as the flaming seraphim.

To give us vision of the perfect beauty
That glows within the common things we see;
To celebrate the dignity of duty,
The joy and wonder of reality,
Till even the dust on which our feet have trod
Shall gleam with the magnificence of God.

The pencils of the dawn are slowly writing,
In characters of flame across the lands,
The doom of hate, courageous souls inciting
To fuller life as faith in life expands.
Love rends the veil; conflicts forever cease,
And life is filled with ministries of peace.

God's dream comes true; a richer life emerges;
Hope's deeper strains from olden chantries chime;
Unlock the gates. Behold the shining verges
Of one full-orbed humanity sublime.