Between the little Here and larger Yonder,
There is a realm (or so one day I read)
Where faithful spirits love-enchained may wander,
Till some remembering soul from earth has fled.
Then, reunited, they go forth afar,
From sphere to sphere, where wondrous angels are.
Not many spirits in that realm are waiting;
Not many pause upon its shores to rest;
For only love, intense and unabating,
Can hold them from the longer, higher quest.
And after grief has wept itself to sleep,
Few hearts on earth their vital memories keep.
Should I pass on, across the mystic border,
Let thy love link me to that pallid land;
I would not seek the heavens of finer order
Until thy barque had left this coarser strand.
How desolate such journeyings would be,
Though straight to Him, were they not shared by thee.
Wert thou first called (dear God, how could I bear it?)
I should enchain thee with my love, I know.
Not great enough am I to free thy spirit
From all these tender ties, and bid thee go.
Nor would a soul, unselfish as thine own,
Forget so soon, and speed to heaven alone.
On earth we find no joy in ways diverging;
How could we find it in the worlds unseen?
I know old memories from my bosom surging,
Would keep thee waiting in that Land Between,
Until together, side by side, we trod
A path of stars, in our great search for God.
Midway upon the route, he paused athirst
And suddenly across the wastes of heat,
He saw cool waters gleaming, and a sweet
Green oasis upon his vision burst.
A tender dream, long in his bosom nursed,
Spread love’s illusive verdure for his feet;
The barren sands changed into golden wheat;
The way grew glad that late had seemed accursed.
She shone, the woman wonder, on his soul;
The garden spot, for which men toil and wait;
The house of rest, that is each heart’s demand;
But when, at last, he reached the gleaming goal,
He found, oh, cruel irony of fate,
But desert sun upon the desert sand.
I know the need of the world,
Though it would not have me know.
It would hide its sorrow deep,
Where only God may go.
Yet its secret it can not keep;
It tells it awake, or asleep,
It tells it to all who will heed,
And he who runs may read.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world,
When it boasts of its wealth the loudest,
When it flaunts it in all men’s eyes,
When its mien is the gayest and proudest.
Oh! ever it lies—it lies,
For the sound of its laughter dies
In a sob and a smothered moan,
And it weeps when it sits alone.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When the earth shakes under the tread
Of men who march to the fight,
When rivers with blood are red
And there is no law but might,
And the wrong way seems the right;
When he who slaughters the most
Is all men’s pride and boast.
The need of the world I know.
I know the need of the world.
When it babbles of gold and fame,
It is only to lead us astray
From the thing that it dare not name,
For this is the sad world’s way.
Oh! poor blind world grown grey
With the need of a thing so near,
With the want of a thing so dear.
The need of the world I know.
The need of the world is love.
Deep under the pride of power,
Down under its lust of greed,
For the joys that last but an hour,
There lies forever its need.
For love is the law and the creed
And love is the unnamed goal
Of life, from man to the mole.
Love is the need of the world.
Skilled mariner, and counted sane and wise,
That was a curious thing which chanced to me,
So good a sailor on so fair a sea.
With favouring winds and blue unshadowed skies,
Led by the faithful beacon of Love’s eyes,
Past reef and shoal, my life-boat bounded free
And fearless of all changes that might be
Under calm waves, where many a sunk rock lies.
A golden dawn; yet suddenly my barque
Strained at the sails, as in a cyclone’s blast;
And battled with an unseen current’s force,
For we had entered when the night was dark
That old tempestuous Gulf Stream of the Past.
But for love’s eyes, I had not kept the course.
His art was loving; Eres set his sign
Upon that youthful forehead, and he drew
The hearts of women, as the sun draws dew.
Love feeds love’s thirst as wine feeds love of wine;
Nor is there any potion from the vine
Which makes men drunken like the subtle brew
Of kisses crushed by kisses; and he grew
Inebriated with that draught divine.
Yet in his sober moments, when the sun
Of radiant summer paled to lonely fall,
And passion’s sea had grown an ebbing tide,
From out the many, Memory singled one
Full cup that seemed the sweetest of them all—
The warm red mouth that mocked him and denied.
The world an abject vassal to her charms,
And kings competing for a single smile,
Yet love she knew not, till upon this isle
She gave surrender to abducting arms.
Not Theseus, who plucked her lips’ first kiss,
Not Menelaus, lawful mate and spouse,
Such answering passion in her heart could rouse,
Or wake such tumult in her soul as this.
Let come what will, let Greece and Asia meet,
Let heroes die and kingdoms run with gore;
Let devastation spread from shore to shore—
Resplendent Helen finds her bondage sweet.
The whole world fights her battles, while she lies
Sunned in the fervour of young Paris’ eyes.
The battles ended, ardent Paris dead,
Of faithful Menelaus long bereft,
Time is the only suitor who is left:
Helen survives, with youth and beauty fled.
By hate remembered, but by love forgot,
Dethroned and driven from her high estate,
Unhappy Helen feels the lash of Fate
And knows at last an unloved woman’s lot.
The Grecian marvel, and the Trojan joy,
The world’s fair wonder, from her palace flies
The furies follow, and great Helen dies,
A death of horror, for the pride of Troy.
* * * * *
Yet Time, like Menelaus, all forgives.
Helen, immortal in her beauty, lives.
Lais when young, and all her charms in flower,
Lais, whose beauty was the fateful light
That led great ships to anchor in the night
And bring their priceless cargoes to her bower,
Lais yet found her cup of sweet turned sour.
Great Plato’s pupil, from his lofty height,
Zenocrates, unmoved, had seen the white
Sweet wonder of her, and defied her power.
She snared the world in nets of subtle wiles:
The proud, the famed, all clamoured at her gate;
Dictators plead, inside her portico;
Wisdom sought madness, in her favouring smiles;
Now was she made the laughing-stock of fate:
One loosed her clinging arms, and bade her go.
Lais, when old and all her beauty gone,
Lais, the erstwhile courted pleasure queen,
Walked homeless through Corinth.
One mocked her mien—
One tossed her coins; she took them and passed on.
Down by the harbour sloped a terraced lawn,
Where fountains played; she paused to view the scene.
A marble palace stood in bowers of green
’Twas here of old she revelled till the dawn.
Through yonder portico her lovers came—
Hero and statesman, athlete, merchant, sage;
They flung the whole world’s treasures at her feet
To buy her favour and exalt her shame.
* * * * *
She spat upon her dole of coins in rage
And faded like a phantom down the street.
You are here, and you are wanted,
Though a waif upon life’s stair;
Though the sunlit hours are haunted
With the shadowy shapes of care.
Still the Great One, the All-Seeing
Called your spirit into being—
Gave you strength for any fate.
Since your life by Him was needed,
All your ways by Him are heeded—
You can trust and you can wait.
You can wait to know the meaning
Of the troubles sent your soul;
Of the chasms intervening
’Twixt your purpose and your goal;
Of the sorrows and the trials,
Of the silence and denials,
Ofttimes answering to your pleas;
Of the stinted sweets of pleasure,
And of pain’s too generous measure—
You can wait the why of these.
Forth from planet unto planet,
You have gone, and you will go.
Space is vast, but we must span it;
For life’s purpose is to know.
Earth retains you but a minute,
Make the best of what lies in it;
Light the pathway where you are.
There is nothing worth the doing
That will leave regret or rueing,
As you speed from star to star.
You are part of the Beginning,
You are parcel of To-day.
When He set His world to spinning
You were flung upon your way.
When the system falls to pieces,
When this pulsing epoch ceases,
When the is becomes the was,
You will live, for you will enter
In the great Creative Centre,
In the All-Enduring Cause.
Sailing away on a summer sea,
Out of the bleak March weather;