Classic Poem

When forth the shepherd boy in Elah's vale
To meet Goliath fared, no coat of mail
Nor, sword nor spear he took, no anything
Except one little penny-dreadful sling.
His pebble sped, the big Philistine's fall
Gave humble means a license once for all,
And helps your bard a warrant to construe
To launch light verse at learned men like you.
Masters of erudition, chosen sirs,
Whose knowledge close with all that's known concurs,
Who taste all fruits on wisdom's tree that grow—
After all's said, what do we need to know?
Knowledge is power. What knowledge? Power for what?
To do, or not to do? To have, or not?
Shall learning make our hearts or pockets stout?
Bring things, or teach us how to go without?
Prompt us to spare, or qualify to spend?
Is it a means, or shall it be an end?

All day the Hindoo sits and contemplates
His navel. Earth spins onward while he waits.
No loss of time his brooding hope concerns;
His concentrated thought serves all his turns—
His food, the least that soul and body joins;
His raiment, but the clout about his loins.
To think is all he asks; indeed, it's more—
He only seeks to keep an open door
Whereinto may perhaps in time be turned
A consciousness transcending all things learned.
Heedless of force, oblivious to fact,
Broken of every wish or power to act,
Under his bo-tree, rapt, behold him sit,
A patient mark for wisdom's darts to hit.

In violent, prodigious contrast, view
Our devotee who lives to put things through!
Intense in aim, tremendous in attempt,
He dares such feats as wizards might have dreamt.
Prompt from a bed too briefly kept he springs
To giant struggles with material things.
He wrests from earth her treasures and her fruits,
Stays time, and grubs up distance by the roots.
Titanic in his hands' resourceful play,
He fits to needs, a thousand leagues away,
Supplies extorted by his conjuring brain
From mine and factory, forest, sea, and plain.
As nature's secrets, yielded one by one
To searching science, meet the revealing sun,
His hail exultant glorifies the hour
That still extends the boundaries of his power.
To have, to hold, to shift, to give and take,
And from each transfer still a profit make—
That is his life: we watch him and admire,
Yet envy not his toil nor grudge his hire.

To each his task: our civilization's need
Includes things as diverse as love and greed—
As brooding thought and bustling energy—
As abstract truth and prompt utility.
His right to earth is best who best can use it;
His birthright man must justify or lose it.
This we should learn, then, and to this end strive,
Living to keep continuously alive,
And daily meet the debt we owe the day—
That irksome, wholesome debt, to make it pay.
Call us utilitarian those who will,
A warrant for our Yankee impulse still
Stands in the immemorial decree
That linked with labor human life shall be.
For liberty and progress, hand in hand
With pushing thrift have gone in many a land,
And mastery of earth and nature brings
The key to endless stores of precious things.
Wealth earned, not filched, power not usurped, but based
On freemen's choice, are mighty tools that, placed
In fitting hands, spread civilization's sway,
And speed the dawning of millennium's day.

Be honor, then, to him who makes the field
To wiser tillage fuller harvests yield;
Who harnesses the lightning, and constrains
Indocile steel to save the finger's pains;
Who teaches us new wants, and, turn about,
Supplies these things we cannot do without,
And makes us hope, so much do wares abound,
There'll some time be enough to go around.
To those devoted souls be honor, too,
Who steadfastly the quest for truth pursue;
Who, rifling history's treasure-house, forecast
The future's hopes and perils from the past;
Who seek creation's darkest depths to plumb—
What man has been, and is, and may become,
Whence brought, and by what trail, and whither bound,
Asking, they wrest its secrets from the ground,
The depths of earth and sea, the celestial vault,
They dredge and sift and span in an assault
So fierce and steady that the hosts of night
Fall ever back before its fervent might,
And Sol each morning rises with a shout,
Surprised at what those fellows have found out.

But honor more be his whose instincts own
The truth, “Man cannot live by bread alone”—
Who sees in righteousness, far more than wealth,
The prime essential to a nation's health;
Whom neither ease, nor quest, sublime or base,
Makes inconsiderate of his brother's case;
Whose effort is, come plenty or come dearth,
God's will to learn, and see it done on earth.
A lack of sturdy men whose aims are high
No surging tide of plenty can supply.
Doomed is the state, whatever its avails,
Where probity falls down and conscience fails.
Not gold nor iron, grain nor ships nor coal,
Can make a nation great that lacks a soul.

This above all, then, brethren, we should know,
How by our growth to make our country grow
In that true glory whose foundations lie
In justice, freedom, and integrity—
Our country whose we are, and in whose fate
Our stake is so immeasurably great,
Whose honor ours involves, her fame our fame,
Her misdirection our remorse and shame.
Manila's guns, reverberating still,
Witness how well her sons can do her will.
Beleaguered Cuba's marching hosts attest
How swells the love of freedom in her breast.
Whate'er befall, God grant her flag may fly
In sign of righteousness and liberty,
Ne'er at ambition's beck to be unfurled
In triumph o'er the weaklings of the world,
Ne'er borne in battle save in mercy's cause
To spread the realm of peace and honest laws!
May Heaven, who gave us strength, give wisdom too,
Our duty teach us, and what not to do;
And so on force may moderation wait—
So match our men of war, our chiefs of state—
That the chief fame our victories shall produce
May be the high renown of victory's use.
So be our arms, our flag, our future blest—
God save the Great Republic of the West!