For the plan would be imperfect
    Unless it held some sphere
  That paid for the toil and talent
    And love that are wasted here.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

From “Picked Poems.”

LET ME LIVE OUT MY YEARS

We speak of the comforts and ease of old age, but our noblest selves do not really desire them.  We want to do more than exist.  We want to be alive to the very last.

  Let me live out my years in heat of blood! 
  Let me die drunken with the dreamer’s wine! 
  Let me not see this soul-house built of mud
  Go toppling to the dust—­a vacant shrine!

  Let me go quickly like a candle light
  Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow! 
  Give me high noon—­and let it then be night! 
      Thus would I go.

  And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,
  My song may triumph down the gray Perhaps! 
  Let me be as a tuneswept fiddlestring
  That feels the Master Melody—­and snaps.

John G. Neihardt

From “The Quest” (collected lyrics).

COLUMBUS

This poem pictures courage and high resolution.  To the terrors of an unknown sea and the mutinous dismay of the sailors Columbus has but two things to oppose—­his faith and his unflinching will.  But these suffice, as they always do.  In the last four lines of the poem is a lesson for our nation to-day.  The seas upon which our ideals have launched us are perilous and uncharted.  In some ways our whole voyage of democracy seems futile.  Shall we turn back, or shall we, like Columbus, answer the falterers in words that leap like a leaping sword; “Sail on, sail on”?

    Behind him lay the gray Azores,
  Behind the Gates of Hercules;
  Before him not the ghost of shores: 
  Before him only shoreless seas. 
  The good mate said:  “Now must we pray,
  For lo! the very stars are gone. 
  Brave Adm’r’l, speak; what shall I say?”
  “Why, say:  ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”

    “My men grow mutinous day by day;
  My men grow ghastly wan and weak.” 
  The stout mate thought of home; a spray
  Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 
  “What shall I say, brave Adm’r’l, say,
  If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
  “Why, you shall say at break of day: 
  ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”

    They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow;
  Until at last the blanched mate said: 
  “Why, now not even God would know
  Should I and all my men fall dead. 
  These very winds forget their way,
  For God from these dread seas is gone. 
  Now speak, brave Adm’r’l; speak and say—­”
  He said:  “Sail on! sail on! and on!”

    They sailed.  They sailed.  Then spake the mate: 
  “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
  He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
  With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 
  Brave Adm’r’l, say but one good word: 
  What shall we do when hope is gone?”
  The words leapt like a leaping sword: 
  “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”