GIFTS

Gifts of one who loved me,—­
’T was high time they came;
When he ceased to love me,
Time they stopped for shame.

PROMISE

In countless upward-striving waves
The moon-drawn tide-wave strives;
In thousand far-transplanted grafts
The parent fruit survives;
So, in the new-born millions,
The perfect Adam lives. 
Not less are summer mornings dear
To every child they wake,
And each with novel life his sphere
Fills for his proper sake.

CARITAS

In the suburb, in the town,
On the railway, in the square,
Came a beam of goodness down
Doubling daylight everywhere: 
Peace now each for malice takes,
Beauty for his sinful weeds,
For the angel Hope aye makes
Him an angel whom she leads.

POWER

His tongue was framed to music,
And his hand was armed with skill;
His face was the mould of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.

WEALTH

Who shall tell what did befall,
Far away in time, when once,
Over the lifeless ball,
Hung idle stars and suns? 
What god the element obeyed? 
Wings of what wind the lichen bore,
Wafting the puny seeds of power,
Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? 
And well the primal pioneer
Knew the strong task to it assigned,
Patient through Heaven’s enormous year
To build in matter home for mind. 
From air the creeping centuries drew
The matted thicket low and wide,
This must the leaves of ages strew
The granite slab to clothe and hide,
Ere wheat can wave its golden pride. 
What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled
(In dizzy aeons dim and mute
The reeling brain can ill compute)
Copper and iron, lead and gold? 
What oldest star the fame can save
Of races perishing to pave
The planet with a floor of lime? 
Dust is their pyramid and mole: 
Who saw what ferns and palms were pressed
Under the tumbling mountain’s breast,
In the safe herbal of the coal? 
But when the quarried means were piled,
All is waste and worthless, till
Arrives the wise selecting will,
And, out of slime and chaos, Wit
Draws the threads of fair and fit. 
Then temples rose, and towns, and marts,
The shop of toil, the hall of arts;
Then flew the sail across the seas
To feed the North from tropic trees;
The storm-wind wove, the torrent span,
Where they were bid, the rivers ran;
New slaves fulfilled the poet’s dream,
Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
Then docks were built, and crops were stored,
And ingots added to the hoard. 
But though light-headed man forget,
Remembering Matter pays her debt: 
Still, through her motes and masses, draw
Electric thrills and ties of law,
Which bind the strengths of Nature wild
To the conscience of a child.