The writer of many books was weary:
" Enough of ink! " said he, " Enough of words!
Would I were a builder of bridges or a breaker of stones ...
Then at least something real were done ... "

Out on a lonely farm in Montana, at the close of day,
The woman brooding toward insanity,
Lit a lamp, and looked in his book: and the tears came:
And the ice-pack round her heart melted down in a torrent ...
Blessed release!

Far in Texas a tubercular boy was plotting a marriage,
But he read the tale, and his heart broke in his breast ...
" I shall not send my blight on the unborn babe, "
So he wrote the author,
" No: I am off to Arizona tomorrow. "

In a New York hall room a girl was dreaming of suicide,
She read his words, and as to a call of trumpets her soul rose and went forth ...

A seed so small that the eye misses it
Stars in the womb the growth of a human child ...
Ye that scatter the seed of words, scorn not the sowing,
Nor the Master that sent ye out in the barren fields.