From GLOUCESTER MOORS

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

The earth is not the steadfast place
We landsmen build upon;

From deep to deep she varies pace,
And while she comes is gone.
Beneath my feet I feel

Her smooth bulk heave and dip;
With velvet plunge and soft upreel
She swings and steadies to her keel
Like a gallant, gallant ship

God, dear God! Does she know her port, Though she goes so far about?

Or blind astray, does she make her sport

To brazen and chance it out?

I watched when her captains passed:

She were better captainless.

Men in the cabin, before the mast

But some were reckless and some aghast,

And some sat gorged at mess.

But thou, vast outbound ship of souls,

What harbor town for thee?

What shapes, when thy arriving tolls,
Shall crowd the banks to see?

Shall all the happy shipmates then

Stand singing brotherly?

Or shall a haggard ruthless few
Warp her over and bring her to,

While the many broken souls of men
Fester down in the slaver's pen
And nothing say or do?

3. International Affairs

THE SOUL'S ERRAND

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand!

Fear not to touch the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Go, tell the court it glows,
And shines like rotten wood;
Go, tell the church it shows
What's good and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates they live

Acting by others' actions;

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by their factions:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition
That rule affairs of state,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:

And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell those that have it most,

They beg for more by spending,

Who in their greatest cost,

Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it lacks devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honor how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favor how she falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;

Tell skill it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;

Tell law it is contention:

And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;

Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming :

If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;

Tell how the country erreth;

Tell manhood shakes off pity;
Tell virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing;

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing:

Yet stab at thee who will,

No stab the Soul can kill!

IN THE DAWN

ODELL SHEPARD

Peace! The perfect word is sounding, like a universal hymn, Under oceans, over mountains, to the world's remotest rim.

Light! At last the deadly arrows of the Archer find their mark. Loathsome forms are shuddering backward to the shelter of the dark.

Hope! The nations stand together on the borders of a dawn That shall dim the noonday splendor of the ages that are gone.

Peace, and light, and hope of morning! Let the belfries reel and sway

While the world is swinging swiftly out of darkness into day.

Let the forests of the steeples, blown by one compelling wind, Swing and sway and clash together one vast peal for all mankind,

While we roll up out of darkness, out of death, out of the gloom Of a blighted planet plunging blindly downward to its doom.

Into light beyond our dreaming, into peace, goodwill toward

men,

Hope beyond the poet's vision, joy beyond the prophet's ken.

While we stand here in the gray dawn, in these early dews of time,

On this height the toil of ages has but just availed to climb,

Brothers, let us pause a moment.

tain towers

Many a darkling moun

Tall against the stars behind us, only less sublime than ours.

Many a peak of ancient quiet glimmers lonely in the snow Whence a shout of joy went skyward silent centuries ago.

France, with Europe singing round her in her false dawn fair and brief;

England, with the vast Armada rocking helpless on the reef;

Rome, when through the Temple of Janus clanged and clashed each rusty gate;

Athens, hurling Persia homeward headlong like a river in spate. .

All of these have climbed before us to a distant Pisgah-sight Of a land they never entered. Shall we also lose our light?

Other earlier dawns before this bloomed, and withered. Men have scaled

Many a peak of dream—and died there. Shall we falter where they failed?

Shall the nations still, forever, struggle forward one by one? Or shall we go up together, brother-like, to greet the sun?

We shall falter, strength will fail us, dreams will perish utterly, Our high hope will be a byword and a scornful memory

If we stand not strong together in this hour, if heart and hand Be not plighted firm and steadfast, linking alien land to land . . .

Ah, but see, we stand together, hand in hand and eye to eye! This, in all the backward ages, has not been beneath the sky.