He used to say:  “I take the work that comes
All ready to my hand.  The lever set,
I grasp and heave withal.  Or rather, I
Love where I live, and yield me to the will
That made the needs about me.  It may be
I find them nearer to my need of work
Than any other choice.  I would not choose
To lack a relish for the thing that God
Thinks worth.  Among my own I will be good;
A helper to all those that look to me. 
This farm is God’s, as much as yonder town;
These men and maidens, kine and horses, his;
And need his laws of truth made rules of fact;
Or else the earth is not redeemed from ill.” 
He spoke not often; but he ruled and did. 
No ill was suffered there by man or beast
That he could help; no creature fled from him;
And when he slew, ’twas with a sudden death,
Like God’s benignant lightning.  For he knew
That God doth make the beasts, and loves them well,
And they are sacred.  Sprung from God as we,
They are our brethren in a lower kind;
And in their face he saw the human look. 
They said:  “Men look like different animals;”
But he:  “The animals are like to men,
Some one, and some another.”  Cruelty,
He said, would need no other fiery hell,
Than that the ghosts of the sad beasts should come,
And crowding, silent, all their heads one way,
Stare the ill man to madness.

By degrees,
They knew not how, men trusted in him.  When
He spoke, his word had all the force of deeds
That lay unsaid within him.  To be good
Is more than holy words or definite acts;
Embodying itself unconsciously
In simple forms of human helpfulness,
And understanding of the need that prays. 
And when he read the weary tales of crime,
And wretchedness, and white-faced children, sad
With hunger, and neglect, and cruel words,
He would walk sadly for an afternoon,
With head down-bent, and pondering footstep slow;
And to himself conclude:  “The best I can
For the great world, is, just the best I can
For this my world.  The influence will go
In widening circles to the darksome lanes
In London’s self.”  When a philanthropist
Said pompously:  “With your great gifts you ought
To work for the great world, not spend yourself
On common labours like a common man;”
He answered him:  “The world is in God’s hands. 
This part he gives to me; for which my past,
Built up on loves inherited, hath made
Me fittest.  Neither will He let me think
Primeval, godlike work too low to need,
For its perfection, manhood’s noblest powers
And deepest knowledge, far beyond my gifts. 
And for the crowds of men, in whom a soul
Cries through the windows of their hollow eyes
For bare humanity, and leave to grow,—­
Would I could help them!  But all crowds are made
Of individuals; and their grief, and pain,
And thirst, and hunger, all are of the one,
Not of the many.  And the power that helps