Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. Various

are given by praise,

      Nor rules of state but rules of good.

      Who hath his life from rumors freed,

      Whose conscience is his strong retreat;

      Whose state can neither flatterers feed,

      Nor ruin make accusers great.

      Who God doth late and early pray

      More of his grace than gifts to lend;

      And entertains the harmless day

      With a well-chosen book or friend.

      This man is freed from servile bands,

      Of hope to rise or fear to fall;

      Lord of himself, though not of lands,

      And having nothing, yet hath all.

      —Henry Wotton.

      ———

      High above hate I dwell;

      O storms, farewell!

      

      ———

      UNCONQUERED

      Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

      I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

      Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the horror of the shade,

      And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

      In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud;

      Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

      It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll;

      I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

      —William Ernest Henley.

      ———

      RELIGION AND DOCTRINE

      He stood before the Sanhedrim:

      The scowling rabbis gazed at him.

      He recked not of their praise or blame;

      There was no fear, there was no shame,

      For one upon whose dazzled eyes

      The whole world poured its vast surprise.

      The open heaven was far too near

      His first day's light too sweet and clear,

      To let him waste his new-gained ken

      On the hate-clouded face of men.

      But still they questioned, Who art thou?

      What hast thou been? What art thou now?

      Thou art not he who yesterday

      Sat here and begged beside the way,

      For he was blind.

      "And I am he;

      For I was blind, but now I see."

      He told the story o'er and o'er;

      It was his full heart's only lore;

      A prophet on the Sabbath day

      Had touched his sightless eyes with clay,

      And made him see who had been blind,

      Their words passed by him like the wind

      Which raves and howls, but cannot shock

      The hundred-fathom-rooted rock.

      Their threats and fury all went wide;

      They could not touch his Hebrew pride.

      Their sneers at Jesus and his band,

      Nameless and homeless in the land,

      Their boasts of Moses and his Lord,

      All could not change him by one word.

      "I know not what this man may be,

      Sinner or saint; but as for me

      One thing I know: that I am he

      Who once was blind, and now I see."

      They were all doctors of renown,

      The great men of a famous town

      With deep brows, wrinkled, broad, and wise

      Beneath their wide phylacteries;

      The wisdom of the East was theirs,

      And honor crowned their silvery hairs.

      The man they jeered, and laughed to scorn

      Was unlearned, poor, and humbly born;

      But he knew better far than they

      What came to him that Sabbath day;

      And what the Christ had done for him

      He knew, and not the Sanhedrim.

      —John Hay.

      ———

      THE OLD STOIC

      Riches I hold in light esteem,

      And Love I laugh to scorn;

      And lust of fame was but a dream,

      That vanished with the morn.

      And, if I pray, the only prayer

      That moves my lips for me

      Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,

      And give me liberty!"

      Yes, as my swift days near their goal,

      'Tis all that I implore,

      In life and death a chainless soul

      And courage to endure.

      —Emily Brontë.

      ———

      Keep to the right, within and without,

      With stranger and pilgrim and friend;

      Keep to the right and you need have no doubt

      That all will be well in the end.

      Keep to the right in whatever you do,

      Nor claim but your own on the way;

      Keep to the right, and hold on to the true,

      From the morn to the close of life's day!

      

      ———

      FOR A' THAT

      Is there for honest poverty

      That hangs his head, and a' that?

      The coward slave, we pass him by,

      We dare be poor for a' that;

      For a' that and a' that;

      Our toils obscure and a' that;

      The