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POEMS


VOLUME TWO


QUOTABLE POEMS

An Ant h o I o gy of
Modern Verse


VOLUME TWO

COMPILED BY

THOMAS CURTIS CLARK


i


WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY
CHICAGO NEW YORK

1931


Copyright 193 i by
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Frew
Norwood, Mass.-LaPorte, Ind.


To My Brother
CHARLES PATTON CLARK

MEDICAL SCIENTIST

AND
LOVER OF BEAUTY


CONTENTS

The poems in this volume are deliberately placed without
attempt to classify them either as to subject or author.
Pages 1-324 contain 560 poems selected for their quotability,
modern tone, and genuine poetic quality. Readers who de-
sire to find poems on any particular theme will find ample
guidance in the very complete indexes beginning on page
325, including

(a) Index of Subjects, pp. 325 to 336.

(b) Index of Authors, pp. 337 to 348.

(c) Index of Titles, pp. 349 to 358.

(d) Index of First Lines, pp. 359 to 366.

Detailed acknowledgment to authors and publishers will
also be found on p. 367.


vii


QUOTABLE
POEMS

VOLUME TWO


They Went Forth to Battle but They
Always Fell

They went forth to battle but they always fell.
Something they saw above the sullen shields.
Nobly they fought and bravely, but not well,
And sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell.
They knew not fear that to the foeman yields,
They were not weak, as one who vainly wields
A faltering weapon; yet the old tales tell
How on the hard-fought field they always fell.

It was a secret music that they heard,

The murmurous voice of pity and of peace,

And that which pierced the heart was but a word,

Though the white breast was red-lipped where the sword

Pressed a fierce cruel kiss and did not cease

Till its hot thirst was surfeited. Ah these

By an unwarlike troubling doubt were stirred,

And died for hearing what no foeman heard.

They went forth to battle but they always fell.
Their might was not the might of lifted spears.
Over the battle-clamor came a spell
Of troubling music, and they fought not well.
Their wreaths are willows and their tribute, tears.
Their names are old sad stories in men's ears.
Yet they will scatter the red hordes of Hell,
Who went to battle forth and always fell.

Shaemas O'Sheel


QUOTABLE POEMS


Opportunity

In an old city by the storied shores,

Where the bright summit of Olympus soars,

A cryptic statue mounted toward the light

Heel-winged, tip-toed, and poised for instant flight.

" statue, tell your name," a traveler cried;

And solemnly the marble lips replied:

" Men call me Opportunity, I lift

My wing&d feet from earth to show how swift

My flight, how short my stay

How Fate is ever waiting on the way."

" But why that tossing ringlet on your brow? "
" That men may seize me any moment: Now,
Now is my other name; today my date;
O traveler, tomorrow is too late!"

Edwin Markham


Prayer

God, though this life is but a wraith,
Although we know not what we use;

Although we grope with little faith,
God, give me the heart to fight and lose.

Ever insurgent let me be,

Make me more daring than devout;
From slock contentment keep inc free

And fill me with a buoyant doubt.

Open my eyes to visions girt
With beauty, and with wonder lit,


QUOTABLE POEMS


But let me always see the dirt,
And all that spawn and die in it.

Open my ears to music, let

Me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums
But never let me dare forget

The bitter ballads of the slums.

From compromise and things half-done,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride;

But when at last the fight is won,
God, keep me still unsatisfied.

Louis Untermeyer


For Those Who Fail

" All honor to him who shall win the prize/'
The world has cried for a thousand years;

But to him who tries and who fails and dies,
I give great honor and glory and tears.

great is the hero who wins a name,

But greater many and many a time
Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame,

And lets God finish the thought sublime.

And great is the man with a sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;

But the man who fails and yet fights on,
Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine!

Joaquin Miller


QUOTABLE POEMS


In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead/ Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrac


Sealed Orders

We bear sealed orders o'er Life's weltered sea,

Our haven dim and far;
We can but man the helm rigKt cheerily,

Steer by the brightest star,

And hope that when at last the Great Command

Is read, we then may hear
Our anchor song, and see the longed-for land

Lie, known and very near.

Richard Burton


QUOTABLE POEMS


From Song of the Open Road

Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading me wherever I
choose.


Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good for-
tune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need
nothing;

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

Walt Whitman


Joses, the Brother of Jesus

Joses, the brother of Jesus, plodded from day to day
With never a vision within him to glorify his clay;
Joses, the brother of Jesus, was one with the heavy clod,
But Christ was. the soul of rapture, and soared, like a lark,

with God.

Joses, the brother of Jesus, was only a worker in wood,
And he never could see the glory that Jesus, his brother,

could.
" Why stays he not in the workshop? " he often used to

complain,

" Sawing the Lebanon cedar, imparting to woods their stain?
Why must he go thus roaming, forsaking my father's

trade,
While hammers are busily sounding, and there is gain to be

made? "


QUOTABLE POEMS


Thus ran the mind of Joses, apt with plummet and rule,
And deeming whoever surpassed him either a knave or a

fool
For he never walked with the prophets in God's great garden

of bliss
And of all mistakes of the ages, the saddest, methinks, was

this
To have such a brother as Jesus, to speak with him day by

day,
But never to catch the vision which glorified his clay.

Harry Kemp


The Judgment

When before the cloud-white throne
We are kneeling to be known
In self's utter nakedness,
Mercy shall be arbitress.

Love shall quench the very shame
That is our tormenting flame;
Love, the one theology,
Set the souls in prison free

Free as sunbeams forth to fare
Into outer darkness, where
It shall be our doom to make
Glory from each earth-mistake.

Not archangels God elects
For celestial architects;
On the stones of hell, the guilt
Of the world, is Zion built.

Katharine Lee Bates


QUOTABLE POEMS


Mountain Air

Tell me of Progress if you will,
But give me sunshine on a hill
The grey rocks spiring to the blue,
The scent of larches, pinks and dew,
And summer sighing in the trees,
And snowy breath on every breeze.
Take towns and all that you find there,
And leave me sun and mountain air!

John Galsworthy


From Tintern Abbey

For I have learned

To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs rne with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime,
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear both what they half create,


QUOTABLE POEMS


And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

William Wordsworth


The Ideal City

O you whom God hath called and set apart

To build a city after His own heart,

Be this your task to fitll the city's veins

With the red blood of friendship; plant her plains

With seeds of peace: above her portals wreathe

Greeting and welcome: let the air we breathe

Be musical with accents of good will

That leap from lip to lip with joyous thrill;

So may the stranger find upon the streets

A kindly look in every face he meets;

So may the spirit of the city tell

All her souls within her gates that all is well;

In all her homes let gentleness be found,

In every neighborhood let grace abound,

In every store and shop and forge and mill

Where men of toil their daily tasks fulfill,

Where guiding brain and workmen's skill are wise

To shape the product of our industries,

Where treasured stores the hands of toil sustain,

Let friendship speed the work and share the gain,

And thus, through all the city's teeming life,

Let helpfulness have room with generous strife

To serve.

Washington Gladden


QUOTABLE POEMS


Calvary

I walked alone to my Calvary,

And no man carried the cross for me:

Carried the cross? Nay, no man knew

The fearful load I bent unto;

But each as we met upon the way

Spake me fair of the journey I walked that day.

I came alone to my Calvary,

And high was the hill and bleak to see;

But lo, as I scaled the flinty side,

A thousand went up to be crucified

A thousand kept the way with me,

But never a cross my eyes could see.

Author Unknown

Good Deeds

How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not.

William Shakespeare

Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight

(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

From " Collected Poems " by Vachel Lindsay. By permission of
The Macmillan Company, publishers.


10 QUOTABLE POEMS

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.

He is among us: as in times before!

And we who toss and lie awake for long

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door,

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep*

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnoughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers 7 Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea,

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

Vachet Undsay


QUOTABLE POEMS 11


Where Is God?

" Oh, where is the sea? " the fishes cried,
As they swam the crystal clearness through;

" We've heard from of old of the ocean's tide,
And we long to look on the water's blue.

The wise ones speak of the infinite sea.
Oh, who can tell us if such there be? "

The lark flew up in the morning bright,
And sang and balanced on sunny wings;

And this was its song: " I see the light,
I look o'er a world of beautiful things;

But, flying and singing everywhere,
In vain I have searched to find the air."

Minot /. Savage

Deathless

I know I am deathless;

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter's

compass;

I know I shall not pass like a child's carlaque cut with a
burnt stick at night.

Walt Whitman
From " Leaves of Grass "


We Are the Music-Makers

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams


12 QUOTABLE POEMS

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure

Can trample a kingdom down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'er threw them with prophesying

To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

In the Woods

Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome*
But when I am stretched beneath the pines,
When the evening star so lonely shines,
I laugh at the love and the pride of man,
At the sophist's schools and the learned clan;
For what are they all in their high conceit
When man in the bush with God can meet?

Ralph Waldo Emerson
From " Good-bye, Proud World "


QUOTABLE POEMS 13


" In No Strange Land "

WORLD invisible, we view thee,
world intangible, we touch thee,
world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!


Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

!Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars 1
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places;
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
? Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry; and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Francis Thompson


14 QUOTABLE POEMS


lo Victis

I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fall in the Battle of
Life

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed
in the strife ;

Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resound-
ing acclaim

Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wear the chaplet
of fame,

But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the
broken in heart,

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and des-
perate part;

Whose youth bore no flower in its branches, whose hopes
burned in ashes away,

From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at,
who stood at the dying of day

With the wreck of their life all around them, unpitied, un-
heeded, alone,

With Death swooping down o'er their failure, and all but
their faith overthrown,

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus its paean for
those who have won;

While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high to the
breeze and the sun

Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying feet

Thronging after the laurel crowned victors, T stand on the
field of defeat,

In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and
dying, and there

Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain-knotted
brows, breathe a prayer,

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, " They only the
victory win,


QUOTABLE POEMS IS

Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the

demon that tempts us within;
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the

world holds on high;
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight if

need be, to die."
Speak, History! Who are Life's victors? Unroll thy long

annals and say,
Are they those whom the world called the victors, who won

the success of a day?

The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans, who fell at Ther-
mopylae's tryst,
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socrates, Pilate

or Christ?

William Wetmore Story


The Kings Are Passing Deathward

The kings are passing deathward in the dark

Of days that had been splendid where they went;
Their crowns are captive and their courts are stark

Of purples that are ruinous, now, and rent.
For all that they have seen disastrous things:

The shattered pomp, the split and shaken throne,
fhey cannot quite forget the way of Kings:

Gravely they pass, majestic and alone.

With thunder on their brows, their faces set
Toward the eternal night of restless shapes,

They walk in awful splendor, regal yet,
Wearing their crimes like rich and kingly capes . . .

Curse them or taunt, they will not hear or see;

The Kings are passing deathward: let them be.

David Morton


16 QUOTABLE POEMS


Failures

They bear no laurels on their sunless brows,
Nor aught within their pale hands as they go;
They look as men accustomed to the slow
And level onward course 'neath drooping boughs.
Who may these be no trumpet doth arouse,
These of the dark processionals of woe,
Unpraised, unblamed, but whom sad Acheron's flow
Monotonously lulls to leaden drowse?
These are the Failures. Clutched by Circumstance,
They were say not, too weak! too ready prey
To their own fear whose fixed Gorgon glance
Made them as stone for aught of great essay;
Or else they nodded when their Master-Chance
Wound his one signal, and went on his way,

Arthur W. Upson


Life Owes Me Nothing

Life owes me nothing. Let the years
Bring clouds or azure, joy or tears,

Already a full cup I've quaffed;

Already wept and loved and laughed,
And seen, in ever endless ways,
New beauties overwhelm the days.

Life owes me naught. No pain that waits
Can steal the wealth from memory's gates;
No aftermath of anguish slow
Can quench the soul-fire's early glow,
I breathe, exulting, each new breath,
Embracing Life, ignoring Death.


QUOTABLE POEMS 17

Life owes me nothing. One clear morn
Is boon enough for being born;

' And be it ninety years or ten,

No need for me to question when.
While Life is mine, I'll find it good,
And greet each hour with gratitude.

Author Unknown


If This Were Enough

God, if this were enough,

That I see things bare to the buff

And up to the buttocks in mire;

That I ask not hope nor hire,

Not in the husk,

Nor dawn beyond the dusk,

Nor life beyond death:

God, if this were faith?

Having felt Thy wind in my face

Spit sorrow and disgrace,

Having seen Thine evil doom

In Golgotha and Khartoum,

And the brutes, the work of Thine hands,

Fill with injustice lands

And stain with blood the sea:

If still in my veins the glee

Of the black night and the sun

And the lost battle, run:

If, an adept,

The iniquitous lists I still accept

With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,

And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:

God, if that were enough?


18 QUOTABLE POEMS

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,

And the sink of the mire,

Veins of glory and fire

Run through and transpierce and transpire,

And a secret purpose of glory in every part,

And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;

To thrill with the joy of girded men

To go on forever and fail and go on again,

And be mauled to the earth and arise,

And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen

with the eyes;

With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?

Robert Louts Stevenson


A Morning Prayer

Let me today do something that will take
A little sadness from the world's vast store,

And may I be so favored as to make
Of joy's too scanty sum a little more.

Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed

Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend.
Nor would I pass unseeing worthy need,

Or sin by silence when I should defend.

However meager be my worldly wealth,
Let me give something that shall aid my kind

A word of courage, or a thought of health
Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find.


QUOTABLE POEMS 19

Let me tonight look back across the span

Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say

Because of some good act to beast or man
" The world is better that I lived today."

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

From Thanatopsis

So live that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

William Cullen Bryant

Count That Day Lost

If you sit down at set of sun

And count the acts that you have done,

And, counting find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard;

One glance most kind,
That fell like sunshine where it went
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
YouVe cheered no heart, by yea or nay

If, through it all
YouVe nothing done that you can trace


20 QUOTABLE POEMS

That brought the sunshine to one face

No act most small

That helped some soul and nothing cost
Then count that day as worse than lost.

George Eliot

The Question Whither

When we have thrown off this old suit

So much in need of mending,
To sink among the naked mute,

Is that, think you, our ending?
We follow many, more we lead,

And you who sadly turf us,
Believe not that all living seed

Must flower above the surface.

Sensation is a gracious gift

But were it cramped to station,
The prayer to have it cast adrift

Would spout from all sensation.
Enough if we have winked to sun,

Have sped the plough a season,
There is a soul for labor done,

Endureth fixed as reason.

Then let our trust be firm in Good,

Though we be of the fasting;
Our questions arc a mortal brood,

Our work is everlasting.
We Children of Beneficence

Are in its being sharers;
And Whither vainer sounds than Whence

For word with such wayfarers,

George Meredith


QUOTABLE POEMS 21


To Whom Shall the World Henceforth Belong?

To whom shall the world henceforth belong,
And who shall go up and possess it?

To the Great-Hearts the Strong

Who will suffer no wrong,

And where they find evil redress it.

To the men of Bold Light

Whose souls seized of Right,

Found a work to be done and have done it.

To the Valiant who fought
For a soul-lifting thought,
Saw the fight to be won and have won it.

To the Men of Great Mind

Set on lifting their kind,

Who, regardless of danger, will do it.

To the Men of Good-will,

Who would cure all Life's ill,

And whose passion for peace will ensue it.

To the Men who will bear

Their full share of Life's care,

And will rest not till wrongs be all righted.

To the Stalwarts who toil
'Mid the seas of turmoil,
Till the haven of safety be sighted.

To the Men of Good Fame

Who everything claim

This world and the next in their Master's great name


22 QUOTABLE POEMS

To these shall the world henceforth belong,
And they shall go up and possess it;
Overmuch, o'erlong, has the world suffered wrong,
We are here by God's help to redress it.

John Oxenham

Man

What a piece of work is a man I how noble in reason! how
infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of
animals!

William Shakespeare
From " Hamlet, Prince of Denmark "


Bring Me Men

Bring me men to match my mountains,

Bring me men to match my plains
Men with empires in their purpose

And new eras in their brains.
Bring me men to match my prairies,

Men to match my inland seas,
Men whose thought shall prove a highway

Up to ampler destinies,
Pioneers to clear thought's marshlands

And to cleanse old error's pen;
Bring me men to match my mountains

Bring me men!

Bring me men to m^tch my forests,
Strong to fight the storm and blast,

Branching toward the skyey future,
Rooted in the fertile past.


QUOTABLE POEMS 23

Bring me men to match my valleys,

Tolerant of sun and snow,
Men within whose fruitful purpose

Time's consummate blooms shall grow,
Men to tame the tigerish instincts

Of the lair and cave and den,
Cleanse the dragon slime of nature

Bring me men!

Bring me men to match my rivers,

Continent cleavers, flowing free,
Drawn by the eternal madness

To be mingled with the sea;
Men of oceanic impulse,

Men whose moral currents sweep
Towards the wide-infolding ocean

Of an undiscovered deep;
Men who feel the strong pulsation

Of tr^e central sea and then
Time their currents to its earth throb

Bring me men!

Sam Walter Foss
From " The Coming American "

Joy and Sorrow

Sullen skies today,

Sunny skies tomorrow;
November steals from May,

And May from her doth borrow;
Griefs Joys in Time's strange dance
Interchangeably advance;
The sweetest joys that come to us

Come sweeter for past sorrow,

Aubrey De Vere


24 QUOTABLE POEMS


Thy Kingdom Come!

Across the bitter centuries I hear the wail of men:

" Oh, would that Jesus Lord, the Christ, would come to us

again."

We decorate our altars with ceremonious pride,
With all the outward shows of pomp His worship is

supplied,

Great churches raise their mighty spires to pierce the sun-
lit skies,
While in the shadow of the cross we utter blasphemies.

We know we do not do His will who lessoned us to pray,
" Our Father grant within our lives Thy Kingdom rule

today."

The prayer He taught us, once a week we mouth with half-
shut eye,
While in the charnel-house of words immortal meanings

die.

Above our brothers' frailties we cry " Unclean! Unclean! "
And with the hands that served her shame still stone the
Magdalene.

We know within our factories that wan-cheeked women

reel
Among the deft and droning belts that spin from wheel to

wheel.
We know that unsexed childhood droops in dull-eyed

drudgery

The little children that He blessed in far-off Galilee
Yet surely, Lord, our hearts would grow more merciful to

them,
If Thou couldst come again to us as once in Bethlehem.

Willard Wattles


QUOTABLE POEMS 25


The Face of a Friend

Blessed is the man that beholdeth the face of a friend in a

far country,
The darkness of his heart is melted in the dawning of day

within him,
It is like the sound of sweet music heard long ago and half

forgotten;
It is like the coming back of birds to a wood where the

winter is ended.

Henry van Dyke


Consummation

Not poppies plant not poppies on my grave!

I want no anodyne to make me sleep ;
I want that All-Bestowing Power, who gave
Immortal love to life, and which we crave

The promise of a larger life, to keep.

What that may be I know not no one knows;

But since love's graces I have striven to gain,
Plant o'er my soon-forgotten dust, a rose
That flower which in love's garden ever blows

That thus a fragrant memory may remain.

For my fond hope has been, that I might leave

A Flowering even in the wayside grass
A Touch of Bloom, life's grayness to relieve
A Beauty, they who follow may perceive,
That hints the scent of roses as they pass.

James Terry White


26 QUOTABLE POEMS


To My Countrymen
(A Voice for Peace)

Heirs of great yesterdays, be proud with me
Of your most envied treasure of the Past;
Not wide domain; not doubtful wealth amassed;
Not ganglia cities rival worlds to be:
But great souls, servitors of Liberty,
Who kept the state to star-set Honor fast,
Not for ourselves alone but that, at last,
No nation should to Baal bow the knee.

Are we content to be inheritors?
Can you not hear the pleading of the sod
That canopies our heroes? Hasten, then!
Help the sad earth unlearn the vogue of war.
Be just and earn the eternal praise of men;
Be generous and win the smile of God.

Robert Underwood Johnson

Sunrise
Day!

Faster and more fast,
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud-cap's brim
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid gray
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away;
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose, reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.

Robert Browning


QUOTABLE POEMS 27


From Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that, from yonder ivy-mantled tower,
The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient, solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;

No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy strokel


28 QUOTABLE POEMS

Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave,

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can stoned urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre;

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Thomas Gray


QUOTABLE POEMS 29


Under the Harvest Moon

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses,
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful unanswerable questions.

Carl Sandburg

The Creedless Love

A creedless love, that knows no clan,

No caste, no cult, no church but Man;
That deems today and now and here,

Are voice and vision of the seer;
That through this lifted human clod

The inflow of the breath of God
Still sheds its apostolic powers

Such love, such trust, such faith be ours.

We deem man climbs an endless slope

Tow'rd far-seen tablelands of hope;
That he, through filth and shame of sin,

Still seeks the God that speaks within;


30 QUOTABLE POEMS

That all the years since time began

Work the eternal Rise of Man ;
And all the days that time shall see

Tend tow'rd the Eden yet to be.

Too long our music-hungering needs
Have heard the iron clash of creeds.

The creedless love that knows no clan,
No caste, no cult, no church but Man,

Shall drown with mellow music all,
The dying jangle of their brawl;

Such love with all its quickening powers,
Such love to God and Man be ours.

Sam Walter Foss

Love Over All

Time flies,

Suns rise

And shadows fall.

Let time go by.

Love is forever over all.

From an English Sun Dial


Patience

Sometimes I wish that I might do
Just one grand deed and die,

And by that one grand deed reach up
To meet God in the sky.

But such is not Thy way, God,

Nor such is Thy decree,
But deed by deed, and tear by tear,

Our souls must climb to Thee,


QUOTABLE POEMS 31

As climbed the only son of God

From manger unto Cross,
Who learned, through tears and bloody sweat,

To count this world but loss;

Who left the Virgin Mother's arms

To seek those arms of shame,
Outstretched upon a lonely hill

To which the darkness came.


As deed by deed, and tear by tear,

He climbed up to the height,
Each deed a splendid deed, each tear

A jewel shining bright,

So grant us, Lord, the patient heart,

To climb the upward way,
Until we stand upon the height,

And see the perfect day.

G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

A Leaf of Grass

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of

the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and

the. egg of the wren,

And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of

heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all

machinery,


32 QUOTABLE POEMS

And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any

statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of
infidels.

Walt Whitman
From " Leaves of Grass "


The Lost Christ

Your skill has fashioned stately creeds,
But where is He, we pray

The friendly Christ of loving deeds?
He is not here today.

With sentences that twist and tease,

Confusing mind and heart,
You forge your wordy homilies

And bid us heed your art.

But where is He or can you tell?
Who stilled the brothers' strife,

Who urged the woman at the well
To live a better life?

Where is the Saint of Galilee,
Crude Peter's faithful guide;

The man who wept at Bethany
Because His friend had died?

We weary of your musty lore

Behind dead walls of gray;
We want His loving words once more

By some Emmaus way.


QUOTABLE POEMS 33

Give us the Christ who can bestow

Some comfort-thought of death.
Give us a Christ our hearts can know

The Man of Nazareth.

Thomas Curtis Clark


Our Known Unknown

Thou as represented to me here
In such conception as my soul allows
Under Thy measureless, my atom-width!
Man's mind, what is it but a convex-glass
Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
Picked out of the immensity of sky,
To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
Our known Unknown, our God revealed to man?

Robert Browning
From " The Ring and the Book "


Today, O Lord

O Lord, I pray
That for this day

I may not swerve
By foot or hand
From Thy command

Not to be served, but to serve.

This, too, I pray,
That from this day

No love of ease
Nor pride prevent
My good intent

Not to be pleased, but to please.


34 QUOTABLE POEMS

And if I may
I'd have this day

Strength from above
To set my heart
In heavenly art

Not to be loved, but to love.

Maltbie D. Babcock

Where is Heaven?

Where is Heaven? Is it not

Just a friendly garden plot,

Walled with stone and roofed with sun,

Where the days pass one by one

Not too fast and not too slow,

Looking backward as they go

At the beauties left behind

To transport the pensive mind.

Does not Heaven begin that day
When the eager heart can say,
Surely God is in this place,
I have seen Him face to face
In the loveliness of flowers,
In the service of the showers,
And His voice has talked to me
In the sunlit apple tree.

Bliss Carman

A Prayer for the New Year

O year that is going, take with you
Some evil that dwells in my heart;
Let selfishness, doubt,
With the old year go out
With joy I would see them depart.


QUOTABLE POEMS 35

year that is going, take with you
Impatience and wilfulness pride;
The sharp word that slips

From those too hasty lips,

1 would cast, with the old year aside.


year that is coming, bring with you

Some virtue of which I have need;

More patience to bear

And more kindness to share,

And more love that is true love indeed.

Laura F. Armitage


The Stirrup-Cup

Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare:
Look how compounded, with what care!
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee
Sweet herbs from all antiquity.


David to thy distillage went,
Keats, and Gotama excellent,
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright,
And Shakespeare for a king-delight.


Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt:
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt;
'Tis thy rich stirrup-cup to me;
I'll drink it down right smilingly.

Sidney Lanier


36 QUOTABLE POEMS


Mothers of Men

" I hold no cause worth my son's life," one said

And the two women with her as she spoke

Joined glances in a hush that neither broke,

So present was the memory of their dead.

And through their meeting eyes their souls drew near,

Linked by their sons, men who had held life dear

But laid it down for something dearer still.

One had wrought out with patient iron will

The riddle of a pestilence, and won,

Fighting on stricken, till his work was done

For children of tomorrow. Far away

In shell-torn soil of France the other lay,

And in the letter that his mother read

Over and over, kneeling as to pray

" I'm thanking God with all my heart today,

Whatever comes " (that was the day he died)

" I've done my bit to clear the road ahead."

In those two mothers, common pain of loss

Blossomed in starry flowers of holy pride,

What thoughts were hers who silent stood beside

Her son the dreamer's cross? A 7 . r

Amelia /. Burr

Prayer

I do not ask a truce

With life's incessant pain;
But school my lips, O Lord,

Not to complain.

I do not ask for peace

From life's eternal sorrow;
But give me courage, Lord,

To fight tomorrow! Peter Gething


QUOTABLE POEMS 37


From If Jesus Came Back Today

If Jesus came back today

What would the people say?

Would they cheer Him and strew the way

With garlands of myrtle and bay

As they did on that distant day

When He came to Jerusalem?

What would America say

If Jesus came back today?

We fashion great churches and creeds
But the heart of the people still bleeds
And the poor still rot in their needs.
We display with pride His cross
In the midst of our pagan life
While we hug to our hearts the dross
Of our selfishness and strife.
What sacrifice have we made
To live the love He prayed?
What willing blood have we shed
To do the deeds He said?
To be popular and well-fed
We forsake the way He led
And follow a ghost instead!

Vincent Godfrey Burns

Life's Evening

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave,
May I a small house and large garden have,
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!

Abraham Cowley


38 QUOTABLE POEMS

Altruism

" The earth is not the abode of the strong alone; it is also
the home of the loving." 7. Arthur Thomson.

The God of things that are

Is the God of the highest heaven;
The God of the morning star,

Of the thrush that sings at even;
The God of the storm and sunshine,

Of the wolf, the snail, and the bee,
Of the Alp's majestic silence,

Of the boundless depths of the sea;

The God of the times and the nations,

Of the planets as they roll,
Of the numberless constellations,

Of the limitless human soul.
For there is nothing small,

And naught can mighty be;
Archangels and atoms all

Embodiments of Thee!

A single thought divine

Holds stars and suns in space;
A dream of man is Thine,

And history finds its place.
When the universe was young

Thine was the perfect thought
That life should be bound in one

By the strand of love enwrought

In the life of the fern and the lily,

Of the dragon and the dove,
Still through the stress and struggle

Waxes the bond of love.


QUOTABLE POEMS 39

Out from the ruthless ages

Rises, like incense mild,
The love of the man and the woman,

The love of the mother and child.

David Starr Jordan

The Spring of God

Across the edges of the world there blows a wind

Mysterious with perfume of a Spring;

A Spring that is not of the kindling earth,

That's more than scent of bloom or gleam of bud;

The Spring of God in flower!

Down there where neither sun nor air came through,

I felt it blow dcross my dungeon walls

The wind before the footsteps of the Lord!

It bloweth now across the world;

It strangely stirs the hearts of men; wars cease;

Rare deeds familiar grow; fastings and prayers,

Forgiveness, poverty; temples are built

On visioned impulses, and children march

On journeys with no end.

Far off, far off He comes, *

And we are swept upon our knees

As meadow grasses kneeling to the wind.

William A. Percy
From In April Once "

From The Vision of Sir Latmfal

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,

We bargain for the graves we lie in;


40 QUOTABLE POEMS

At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,

Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking;
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,

Tis only God may be had for the asking;
No price is set on the lavish Summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen

Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean

To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun

With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world and she to her nest
In the nice ear of Nature, which song is the best?

James Russell Lowell


QUOTABLE POEMS 41


Loyalties

Let us keep splendid loyalties,

For we are falling prey to lesser things.

What use are breath and strength if we no longer feel

The thrill of battle for some holy cause

Or hear high morning bugles calling us away?

Let brave hearts dare to break the truce with things

Ere we have lost our ancient heritage.

Are we to gain a world to lose our souls,

Souls which can keep faith until death

And die, triumphant, in some crimson dawn?

Nay, we must keep faith with the unnumbered brave

Who pushed aside horizons, that we might reach

The better things: We cannot rest until

We have put courage once more on her throne;

For Honor clamors for her heritage,

And Right still claims a kingdom of its own.

Walter A. Cutter

God Is Here

God is here! I hear His voice

While thrushes make the woods rejoice.

I touch His robe each time I place
My hand against a pansy's face.

I breathe His breath if I but pass
Verbenas trailing through the grass.

God is here! From every tree
His leafy fingers beckon me.

Madeleine Aaron


42 QUOTABLE POEMS


I Tramp a Perpetual Journey

I tramp a perpetual journey,

My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut

from the woods,

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents, and a

plain public road.

Not I nor anyone else, can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

Walt Whitman
From " Leaves of Grass "


Worship

Work is devout, and service is divine.

Who stoops to scrub a floor

May worship more

Than he who kneels before a holy shrine;

Who crushes stubborn ore

More worthily adore

Than he who crushes sacramental wine.

Roy Campbell MacFie

The Seven Ages of Man

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,


QUOTABLE POEMS 43

His acts being seven ages. As, first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school: And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow: Then the soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth: And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part: The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound: Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

William Shakespeare
From " As You Like It "


From Among the Ferns

I lay among the ferns,

Where they lifted their fronds, innumerable, in the green-
wood wilderness, like wings winnowing the air;
And their voices went by me continually.


44 QUOTABLE POEMS

And I listened, and Lo! softly inaudibly raining I heard not
the voices of the ferns only, but of all living creatures:

Voices of mountain and star,

Of cloud and forest and ocean,

And of little rills tumbling among the rocks,

And of the high tops where the moss-beds are and the springs
arise.

As the wind at midday rains whitening over the grass,

As the night-bird glimmers a moment, fleeting between the
lonely watcher and the moon,

So softly inaudibly they rained,

While I sat silent.

And in the silence of the greenwood I knew the secret of the

growth of the ferns;
I saw their delicate leaflets tremble breathing an unde-

scribed and unuttered life;
And, below, the ocean lay sleeping;
And round them the mountains and the stars dawned in

glad companionship forever.

Edward Carpenter


The Newer Vainglory

Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,

Not with himself aloud,
With proclamation, calling on the ranks

Of an attentive crowd.


" Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,

But other ruffians' backs,
Imputing crime such is my tolerant haste

To any man that lacks.


QUOTABLE POEMS 45

" For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,

And the age honors me.
Thank God I am not as these rigid fools,

Even as this Pharisee."

Alice Meynell


The Place of Peace

At the heart of the cyclone tearing the sky

And flinging the clouds and the towers by,

Is a place of central calm;

So here in the roar of mortal things,

I have a place where my spirit sings,

In the hollow of God's palm.

Edwin Markham


The Seeker After God

There was a dreamer once, whose spirit trod
Unnumbered ways in thwarted search for God:
He stirred the dust on ancient books; he sought
For certain light in what the teachers taught;
He took his staff and went unto the Wise,
And deeper darkness fell about his eyes;
He lived a hermit, and forebore his food,
And God left visitless his solitude;
He wrapped himself in prayer night after night,
And mocking demons danced across his sight.
Resigned at last to Him he could not find,
He turned again to live among mankind
And when from man he no more stood apart,
God, on that instant, visited his heart!

Harry Kemp


46 QUOTABLE POEMS


The Survivor

When the last day is ended,

And the nights are through;
When the last sun is buried

In its grave of blue;

When the stars are snuffed like candles,

And the seas no longer fret;
When the winds unlearn their cunning,

And the storms forget;

When the last lip is palsied,

And the last prayer said;
Love shall reign immortal

While the worlds lie dead!

Frederic Lawrence Knowles


Choice

Ask and it shall be given.

Ask ask.

And if you ask a stone

Expect not bread;

And if the stone glitter like a caught star,

And shine on a warm, soft breast,

And you have tossed your soul away

To see it in that nest,

Yet is it still a stone not bread.

Seek and you shall find.
Seek seek.

And if you go the crowded street
Look not to find the hills;


QUOTABLE POEMS 47

And if the shops sit gay along the way,
And laughter fills the air,
Still you have lost the hills.

Knock and the door shall open.
Knock knock.
Two doors are there, beware!
Think well before you knock;
Your tapping finger will unlock
Your heaven or hell.

Ellen Coit Elliott


Past Ruined Hion

Past ruined Hion Helen lives,

Alcestis rises from the shades;
Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives

Immortal youth to mortal maids.

Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil

Hide all the peopled hills you see,
The gay, the proud, while lovers hail

These many summers you and me.

Walter Savage Landor


Nature and Religion

Where shall we get religion? Beneath the open sky,

The sphere of crystal silence surcharged with deity.

The winds blow from a thousand ways and waft their balms

abroad,
The winds blow toward a million goals but all winds

blow from God.


48 QUOTABLE POEMS

The stars the old Chaldeans saw still weave their maze

on high

And write a thousand thousand years their bible in the sky.
The midnight earth sends incense up, sweet with the breath

of prayer
Go out beneath the naked night and get religion there.

Where shall we get religion? Beneath the blooming tree,
Beside the hill-encircled brooks that loiter to the sea;
Beside all twilight waters, beneath the noonday shades.
Beneath the dark cathedral pines, and through the tangled

glades;

Wherever the old urge of life provokes the dumb, dead sod
To tell its thought in violets, the soul takes hold on God.
Go smell the growing clover, and scent the blooming pear,
Go forth to seek religion and find it anywhere.

Sam Walter Foss


Thanksgiving

For all things beautiful, and good, and true;

For things that seemed not good yet turned to good;

For all the sweet compulsions of Thy will

That chastened, tried, and wrought us to Thy shape;

For things unnumbered that we take of right,

And value first when they are withheld;

For light and air; sweet sense of sound and smell;

For ears to hear the heavenly harmonies;

For eyes to see the unseen in the seen;

For vision of the Worker in the work;

For hearts to apprehend Thee everywhere;

We thank Thee, Lord.

John Oxenkam


QUOTABLE POEMS 49


Magna Est Veritas

Here, in this little Bay,

Full of tumultuous life and great repose,

Where, twice a day,

The purposeless, glad ocean comes and goes,

Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town,

I sit me down.

For want of me the world's course will not fail;

When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;

The truth is great, and shall prevail,

When none cares whether it prevail or not.

Coventry Patmore


Beauty

How can you smile when pain is everywhere;
How flaunt complacently your vulgar wealth?
" It is my duty to be gay. My health
And calm delight the eye and banish care
It would be sad indeed if none were free
To sanction Beauty and embody Joy.
Enough of you, who would with gloom destroy
My grace. I do my share of Charity! "

Your share of charity! Who tipped the scales
To Sophistry and weighed a fancy gown
Against a street rat's need of bread? The nails
Of Calvary, the cross, the thorned crown,
The face of sorrow that He wore, reply:
" Forgive them, God, they know not when they lie! "

Mary Craig Sinclair


SO QUOTABLE POEMS


Lone-Land

Around us lies a world invisible,

With isles of dream and many a continent

Of Thought, and Isthmus Fancy, where we dwell

Each as a lonely wanderer intent

Upon his vision; finding each his fears

And hopes encompassed by the tide of Tears.

John B. Tabb


My Enemy

An enemy I had, whose mien

I stoutly strove in vain to know;
For hard he dogged my steps, unseen,

Wherever I might go.

My plans he balked; my aims he foiled;

He blocked my every onward way.
When for some lofty goal I toiled,

He grimly said me nay.

" Come forth! " I cried, " Lay bare thy guise!

Thy wretched features I would see."
Yet always to my straining eyes

He dwelt in mystery.

Until one night I held him fast,

The veil from off his form did draw;
I gazed upon his face at last

And, lo! myself I saw.

Edwin L. Sabin


QUOTABLE POEMS 51


Memory

My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour
J Twas noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Pass On the Torch

Pass on the torch, pass on the flame;
Remember whence the Glory came;
And eyes are on you as you run,
Beyond the shining of the sun.

Lord Christ, we take the torch from Thee;
We must be true, we must be free,
And clean of heart and strong of soul,
To bear the Glory to its goal.

America, God hear the prayer
America for God, we dare,
With Lincoln's heart and Lincoln's hand,
To fling a flame across the land.

O Lord of life, to Thee we kneel;
Maker of men, our purpose seall
We will, for honor of Thy Name,
Pass on the Torch, pass on the flame.

Allen Eastman Cross


52 QUOTABLE POEMS


The Miser

I have wasted nothing. O Lord, I have saved,

Saved, put by in a goodly hoard.

What of the prodigals? Judge them, Lord

Their wanton waste of Thy mercies poured

Into the sewers! Profligates!

Judge them, Lord, in Thy righteous wrath.

I have saved, O Lord, I have scraped and saved,

With my eyes downbent to my daily path;

I have counted and carried, checked and stored,

Nothing too worthless, nothing too small,

Never a fragment thrown away

A gainful use I have found for all.

But what is my store? Do they call this Death,
This poignant insight? At last I see.
I have wasted nothing, Lord, but life,
Time, and the talent Thou gavest me.

Laura Bell Everett


Whichever Way the Wind Doth Blow

Whichever way the wind doth blow
Some heart is glad to have it so;
Then blow it east or blow it west,
The wind that blows, that wind is best.


My little craft sails not alone;
A thousand fleets from every zone
Are out upon a thousand seas;
And what for me were favouring breeze


QUOTABLE POEMS S3

Might dash another, with the shock
Of doom, upon some hidden rock.
And so I do not dare to pray
For winds to waft me on my way,
But leave it to a Higher Will
To stay or speed me; trusting still
That all is well, and sure that He
Who launched my bark will sail with me
Through storm and calm, and will not fail
Whatever breezes may prevail
To land me, every peril past,
Within His sheltering Heaven at last.

Then whatsoever wind doth blow,
My heart is glad to have it so;
And blow it east or blow it west,
The wind that blows, that wind is best,

Caroline Atherton Mason


The Tide of Faith

So faith is strong

Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink.

It comes when music stirs us, and the chords,

Moving on some grand climax, shake our souls

With influx new that makes new energies.

It comes in swellings of the heart and tears

That rise at noble and at gentle deeds.

It comes in moments of heroic love,

Un jealous joy in joy not made for us;

In conscious triumph of the good within,

Making us worship goodness that rebukes.

Even our failures are a prophecy,

Even our yearnings and our bitter tears


54 QUOTABLE POEMS

After that fair and true we cannot grasp.
Presentiment of better things on earth
Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls
To admiration, self-renouncing love.

George Eliot

Vitse Summa Brevis

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:

Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream.

Ernest Dowson

From Ulysses

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite


QUOTABLE POEMS 55

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Tennyson

Invincible

The years race by on padded feet
Unhaltingly, and panther-fleet
Imprinting marks of drab decay.

My hair grows ashen; cravings numb;
Lips pale; and telltale age-lines come
Life's hoary touch I may not stay.

Time-scarred . . . yet I shall scorn to weep
For transient youth if I can keep
My piquant heart from turning gray!

Winnie Lynch Rockett


Rules for the Road

Stand straight:

Step firmly, throw your weight:

The heaven is high above your head,

The good gray road is faithful to your tread.


56 QUOTABLE POEMS

Be strong:

Sing to your heart a battle song:
Though hidden f oemen lie in wait,
Something is in you that can smile at Fate,

Press through:

Nothing can harm if you are true.

And when the night comes, rest:

The earth is friendly as a mother's breast.

Edwin Markham


The White Christs

The White Christs come from the East,

And they follow the way of the sun;
And they smile, as Pale Men ask them to

At the things Pale Men have done;
For the White Christs sanction the sum of things

Faggot and club and gun.

Whine of the groaning car,

Caste, which divides like a wall;
Curse of the raw-sored soul;

Doom of the great and small;
The White Christs fashioned by Pale White Men

Sanction and bless it all.

Prophets of truth have said

That Afric and Ind must mourn;
And the children of Oman weep

Trampled and slashed and torn,
Keeping the watch with brown Cathay

Till the Black Christs shall be born.

Guy Fitch Phelps


QUOTABLE POEMS 57


Prayer for a Little Home

God send us a little home
To come back to when we roam
Low walls and fluted tiles
Wide windows, a view for miles;
Red firelight and dee