Classic Poem

I'll not say hard things about you, dear world:
In my sorest resentments, in my saddest reverses, I'll not say hard things:
I'll allow you your incompleteness and give you time to become complete,
And allow for the imperfections of men and give them time to become perfect,
And refuse to make too much of your cruel contradictions that I may not understand,
And criticise you and rant about you and scorn you and swear I am through with you:
All that and more, dear world: I'll spare nothing, I'll hold back no rebuke:
And when you are accused I'll not defend you: I'll let you suffer and listen to your sentence:
For I dont hold a brief for you, dear world: I'm not in your pay — I dont have to coddle you:
I see too well how beautiful you are and how ugly you are — how fair you are and how foul you are:
And so I let the worst be said about you and even acknowledge the worst,
And I stand aside while others have the floor to tell you to your face what you are like,
Waiting till the last word of contempt or doubt is spoken before I break in,
And only then breaking in on my disappointed and sorrowful brothers in a quiet mild way,
Not so much wishing to pat you on the back or crown you as just to move near to you,
Not so much ready to greet you with phrases in loud acclamation as just to move closer, closer to you and be silent.

The people are gathered together: I hear their quarreling voices: they are asking questions of each other:
The people: your people, dear world: my people: asking questions of each other and of you:
The profaned maltreated people, the robbed subjugated people, thronging to you, defying you:
With guns in their hands, with daybreak in their brains, with hating loving faith in their hearts, challenging your replies:
All of them — the few half overfed, the many half starving — pushing pressing to your door demanding an audience:
Unwilling longer to be sent away ungratified, resolving now to get in if they have to break in,
Wanting to know why things are so and so, why your storms mow them down like a harvest,
Wanting to know why you drive their girls to the streets and their boys to the scaffold,
Wanting to know why you draw lines across the earth for two sorts of people when they are all your children;
Wanting to know: aroused and threatening: thinking it no more than right for you to be honest with them:
With them, the people, your own flesh and blood, patiently strong, coming to you with their chains on:
With them, the people, lifting up their manacles and asking you what they mean:
Thunderously noisy, ominously silent, talking out, saying nothing, looking expectantly at you:
I for myself, hearing it all, taking a part in it, too: raising my weaponless menacing hands with theirs:
To you, dear world, giving you no rest, never stilled, multitudinously surging in upon you the same as the sea:
I hear and see it all, dear world: I'm a part of it all, dear world: and so I set it down blackly without a bit of the shadow cut off.

Yes, I see and hear it all, dear world, and am convinced by it all,
But I dont come to conclusions: I stand to one side while the crowd are groping for their conclusions:
And strange visions visit me: come to me not from on high or by a mysterious revelation:
Come to me out of the lives and sufferings of those who complain, out of the nobility of those who are wronged:
Come to me out of the common fund of everyday behavior bringing me riches and comfort:
Come to me deliriously binding out of the loves of men and women lawful or free:
Come to me thrilling my body, come to me uplifting my soul,
Saying strangely that for you which you could not say for yourself,
Clearing up contradictions, mercifully tempering edges that are cruel, in your sufficing name:
You, dear world, who can say nothing in defense — who can only be arraigned and convicted:
You, dear world, who are helpless till we help you, who can only sing in our songs:
You, dear world, who are not against us as long as we are for you: no — not as long as we are for you:
You, dear world, who, for all your faults, are my one chum of all the stars in space:
You, dear world, who gather me to your nearby flesh, who draw me to your farther spirit:
Yes, I see and hear it all, dear world, and admit it all, yet nestle closer closer to you and am silent.

I sympathize with you, dear world: I know what it must mean to you: yes, I know:
To have to be so dead still in confession when you are so stirringly alive with proofs,
To have to take all that is said to you with composure without retort or making a sign,
To have to seem to be guilty and cruel when you know yourself to be innocent and kind,
To have your children abandon you and be unable to open your mouth:
Oh! I know the mad horror of that: I go through it with you, dear world:
We go through it understanding each other, dear world, you with me, in the dark hours, together:
And though you can say nothing I can say much and will raise my protesting cry:
Standing speaking for you in my own name: till everybody may hear and see, standing speaking for you: defiantly contending for you:
Where you give yourself no meanings I giving you meanings proudly enough,
Where others give you false meanings I giving you true meanings in return:
You can rely upon me, dear world: I giving you meanings large enough and loving enough to account for all disaster:
I'll not say hard things about you, dear world.