Each one could be a Jesus mild,
Each one has been a little child,
A little child with laughing look,
A lovely white unwritten book;
A book that God will take, my friend,
As each goes out at journey's end.
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt Held in cohesion by unresting cells, Which work they know not why, which never halt, Myself unwitting where their Master dwells?
All ye that pass by!
While we least think it he prepares his Mate.
Mate, and the King's pawn played, it never ceases,
Though all the earth is dust of taken pieces.
In the power and splendor of the universe, inspiration waits for the millions to come. Man has only to strive for it. Poems greater than the Iliad, plays greater than Macbeth, stories more engaging than Don Quixote await their seeker and finder.
Man cannot call the brimming instant back;
Time's an affair of instants spun to days;
If man must make an instant gold, or black,
Let him, he may; but Time must go his ways.
Life may be duller for an instant's blaze.
Life's an affair of instants spun to years,
Instants are only cause of all these tears.
I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.
State are not made, nor patched; they grow;
Grow slow through centuries of pain,
And grow correctly in the main;
But only grow by certain laws,
Of certain bits in certain jaws.
When the last sea is sailed and last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I pray, Be good to me, O Lord.