peace

Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance
and whirl like children. Man's mind is aroused by their shouts; his
thoughts long to be the playmates of things.
Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their
arms to clutch the earth, -their efforts stiffen into bricks and
stones, and thus the city of man is built.
Voices come swarming from the past,-seeking answers from the
living moments. Beats of their wings fill the air with tremulous

As when two men have loved a woman well,
Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
And the long pauses of this wedding bell;
Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
The two lives left that most of her can tell:
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since:

Love thyself last. Look near, behold thy duty
To those who walk beside thee down life’s road;
Make glad their days by little acts of beauty,
And help them bear the burden of earth’s load.

Love thyself last. Look far and find the stranger,
Who staggers ‘neath his sin and his despair;
Go lend a hand, and lead him out of danger,
To heights where he may see the world is fair.

Love thyself last. The vastnesses above thee
Are filled with Spirit Forces, strong and pure.

Love is enough. Let us not ask for gold.
Wealth breeds false aims, and pride and selfishness;
In those serene, Arcadian days of old
Men gave no thought to princely homes and dress.
The gods who dwelt on fair Olympia's height
Lived only for dear love and love's delight.
Love is enough.

Love is enough. Why should we care for fame?
Ambition is a most unpleasant guest:
It lures us with the glory of a name
Far from the happy haunts of peace and rest.
Let us stay here in this secluded place

Devyde my tymes and rate my wretched howres
From days to months, fro months to many yeers,
And than compare my sweetest to my sowres then
And see wich more in equall vewe appeares;
And judge that from my dayes and yeers of care
I have but howrs of comforte to compare.


Just and not muche it were, in thes extreams
To have a touche and torment of ye thought:
For any myghte that any ryght esteems
To yealde so small delyght so deerly bought;
But he that lyues unto his owne despyghte

I dreamt my little boys were dead
And I was sitting wild and lone;
On closed unmoving knees my head
Lay rigid as a stone.
And thus I sat without a tear,
And though I drew life’s painful breath,
All life to me seemed cold and drear,
And comfortless as death:

Sat on the earth as on a bier,
Where loss and ruin lived alone,
Without the comfort of a tear—
Without a passing groan.

And there was stillness everywhere,
Ensphering one wide sense of woe;

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,

In a southern city lived a wealthy family;
In a southern city was the happy home
Of a father and mother and a little daughter.
In peace and contentment they lived alone.
II
But one summer evening there happened a misfortune,
Which caused the parents to weep and mourn,
For this little daughter, a loving little treasure,
Was a poor little wanderer far, far from home.
III
It happened thus, -- the mother went out calling
On a widow friend, who lived all alone;
She left her little daughter in the care of her father,

I

Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.

I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have you understand,
Is the neatest and the sweetest little garden in the land;
A span of sunny quietude, with walls so high and stout,
They shut me in from all the world, and shut the whole world out,

Pilot of the soul, awake,
Save us for thy mercies' sake;
Now rebuke the angry deep,
Save, O save thy sinking ship!

Stand at the helm, our vessel steer,
Mighty on our side appear
Saviour, teach us to descry
Where the rocks and quicksands lie.

The waves shall impotently roll,
If thou 'rt the anchor of the soul:
At thy word the wind shall cease,
Storms be hush'd to perfect peace.

Be thou our haven of retreat,
A rock to fix our wav'ring feet,
Teach us to own thy sovereign sway,