Classic Poem

BROTHER of Man, all hail!
Through such as thee and those that with thee wrought
The world is daily saved — ay, ever saved shall be.
Not by some magic alchemy
By bended sages through the centuries sought;
Not by some cloistered mystery of life;
But by the sheer necessity of strife,
The long, unsacred treadmill of routine.
Oh, more puissant than the authentic mien
Of sceptred king or queen,
The virtues of the humble, ages-old,
That, like the Milky Way, forever hold
Their darkest night within a net of gold:
A natural faith the bookman cannot daunt,
Work, patience, discipline, the comradeship of want,
And simple love assuaging sorrow gaunt.
Great is Invention! Do its annals mark
A single virtue newer than the Ark?
Praise, then, the staunch, the overpitied poor,
Who from their riches yet may save the rich,
And something dearer than the Koh-i-noor
Find for them in the mine or in the ditch.
Happy the hands that have but clinging soil
Of honest earth, unstained by blood or wrong,
That make a knighthood of their iron toil,
And even from a pittance save a song.
No overseer of Egyptian brood,
But comrade of their swarthy day, wert thou.
Of all that digged or hewed
None feared thy frown or for thy favor sued,
For lambent justice dwelt beneath thy brow.
Thy gentle strength, thy kindly calm,
Were for their bruises satisfying balm.
For this, to them and thee, the palm!