Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul. Various

desecrate his name.

      But Truth shall conquer at the last,

      For round and round we run;

      And ever the Right comes uppermost,

      And ever is Justice done.

      Pace through thy cell, old Socrates,

      Cheerily to and fro;

      Trust to the impulse of thy soul,

      And let the poison flow.

      They may shatter to earth the lamp of clay

      That holds a light divine,

      But they cannot quench the fire of thought

      By any such deadly wine.

      They cannot blot thy spoken words

      From the memory of man

      By all the poison ever was brewed

      Since time its course began.

      To-day abhorred, to-morrow adored,

      For round and round we run,

      And ever the Truth comes uppermost,

      And ever is Justice done.

      Plod in thy cave, gray anchorite;

      Be wiser than thy peers;

      Augment the range of human power,

      And trust to coming years.

      They may call thee wizard, and monk accursed,

      And load thee with dispraise;

      Thou wert born five hundred years too soon

      For the comfort of thy days;

      But not too soon for human kind.

      Time hath reward in store;

      And the demons of our sires become

      The saints that we adore.

      The blind can see, the slave is lord,

      So round and round we run;

      And ever the Wrong is proved to be wrong

      And ever is Justice done.

      Keep, Galileo, to thy thought,

      And nerve thy soul to bear;

      They may gloat o'er the senseless words they wring

      From the pangs of thy despair;

      They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide

      The sun's meridian glow;

      The heel of a priest may tread thee down

      And a tyrant work thee woe;

      But never a truth has been destroyed;

      They may curse it and call it crime;

      Pervert and betray, or slander and slay

      Its teachers for a time.

      But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,

      As round and round we run;

      And the Truth shall ever come uppermost,

      And Justice shall be done.

      And live there now such men as these—

      With thoughts like the great of old?

      Many have died in their misery,

      And left their thought untold;

      And many live, and are ranked as mad,

      And are placed in the cold world's ban,

      For sending their bright, far-seeing souls

      Three centuries in the van.

      They toil in penury and grief,

      Unknown, if not maligned;

      Forlorn, forlorn, bearing the scorn

      Of the meanest of mankind!

      But yet the world goes round and round,

      And the genial seasons run;

      And ever the Truth comes uppermost,

      And ever is Justice done.

      —Charles Mackay.

      ———

      We cannot kindle when we will

      The fire which in the heart resides.

      The spirit bloweth and is still;

      In mystery our soul abides:

      But tasks in hours of insight willed

      Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

      With aching hands and bleeding feet

      We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;

      We bear the burden and the heat

      Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.

      Not till the hours of light return,

      All we have built do we discern.

      —Matthew Arnold.

      ———

      WHAT MAKES A HERO?

      What makes a hero?—not success, not fame,

      Inebriate merchants, and the loud acclaim

      Of glutted avarice—caps tossed up in air,

      Or pen of journalist with flourish fair;

      Bells pealed, stars, ribbons, and a titular name—

      These, though his rightful tribute, he can spare;

      His rightful tribute, not his end or aim,

      Or true reward; for never yet did these

      Refresh the soul, or set the heart at ease.

      What makes a hero?—An heroic mind,

      Expressed in action, in endurance proved.

      And if there be preëminence of right,

      Derived through pain well suffered, to the height

      Of rank heroic, 'tis to bear unmoved

      Not toil, not risk, not rage of sea or wind,

      Not the brute fury of barbarians blind,

      But worse—ingratitude and poisonous darts,

      Launched by the country he had served and loved.

      This, with a free, unclouded spirit pure,

      This, in the strength of silence to endure,

      A dignity to noble deeds imparts

      Beyond the gauds and trappings of renown;

      This is the hero's complement and crown;

      This missed, one struggle had been wanting still—

      One glorious triumph of the heroic will,

      One self-approval in his heart of hearts.

      —Henry Taylor.

      ———

      As the bird trims her to the gale

      I trim myself to the storm of time;

      I man the rudder, reef the sail,

      Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime;

      "Lowly faithful banish fear,

      Right