My Virtual Reading Room

The Poem I Should Like to Write

The poem I should like to write was written long ago,
In vast primeval valleys and on mountains clad in snow;
It was written where no foot of man or beast had ever trod,
And where the first wild flower turned its smiling face to God;
Where mighty winds swept far and wide o'er dark and sullen seas,
And where the first earth-mother sat, a child upon her knees.

The poem I should like to write is written in the stars,
Where Venus holds her glowing torch behind her gleaming bars;
Where old Arcturus swings his lamp across the fields of space,
And all his brilliant retinue is wheeling into place;
Where unknown suns must rise and set, as ages onward fare--
The poem I should like to write is surely written there.

No human hand can write it, for with a pen divine,
The Master Poet wrote it--each burning word and line.

(Margaret A. Windes)

Life

Life is too brief
Between the budding and the falling leaf.
Between the seed time and the golden sheaf,
                        For hate and spite.
We have no time for malice and for greed;
Therefore, with love make beautiful the deed;
                        Fast speeds the night.

Life is too swift
Between the blossom and the white snow's drift,
Between the silence and the lark's uplift,
                         For bitter words.
In kindness and in gentleness our speech
Must carry messages of hope, and reach
                          The sweetest chords.

Life is too great
Between the infant's and the man's estate,
Between the clashing of earth's strife and fate,
                          For petty things.
Lo! we shall yet who creep with cumbered feet
Walk glorious over heaven's golden street,
                          Or soar on wings!

(W. M. Vories)

“O May I Join the Choir Invisible”

George Eliot (1819–80)

Longum Illudtempus, Quum Non Ero, Magis Me Movet, Quam Hoc Exiguum.—Cicero, Ad Att., Xii. 18.

O MAY I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirr’d to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn	5
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:	10
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d	15
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d;
Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,	20
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobb’d religiously in yearning song,
That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,	25
And what may yet be better,—saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shap’d it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—	30
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyr’d men have made more glorious	35
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,	40
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.