When duties unfulfilled remain,
Or noble works are left unplanned,
Or when great deeds cry out in vain
On coward heart and trembling hand,—­

Then will a seeming Angel speak:—­
“The hours are fleeting—­great the need—­
If thou art strong and others weak,
Thine be the effort and the deed.

“Deaf are their ears who ought to hear;
Idle their hands, and dull their soul;
While sloth, or ignorance, or fear,
Fetters them with a blind control.

“Sort thou the tangled web aright;
Take thou the toil—­take thou the pain: 
For fear the hour begin its flight,
While Right and Duty plead in vain.”

And now it is I bid thee pause,
Nor let this Tempter bend thy will: 
There are diviner, truer laws
That teach a nobler lesson still.

Learn that each duty makes its claim
Upon one soul:  not each on all. 
How, if God speaks thy Brother’s name,
Dare thou make answer to the call?

The greater peril in the strife,
The less this evil should be done;
For as in battle, so in life,
Danger and honour still are one.

Arouse him then:- this is thy part: 
Show him the claim; point out the need;
And nerve his arm, and cheer his heart;
Then stand aside, and say “God speed!”

Smooth thou his path ere it is trod;
Burnish the arms that he must wield;
And pray, with all thy strength, that God
May crown him Victor of the field.

And then, I think, thy soul shall feel
A nobler thrill of true content,
Than if presumptuous, eager zeal
Had seized a crown for others meant.

And even that very deed shall shine
In mystic sense, divine and true,
More wholly and more purely thine—­
Because it is another’s too.

VERSE:  A LOST CHORD

Seated one day at the Organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an Angel’s Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that Death’s bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,—­
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.

VERSE:  TOO LATE