True Brotherhood

When in the even ways of life
    The old world jogs along,
Our little coloured flags we flaunt:
Our little separate selves we vaunt:
    Each pipes his native song.
And jealousy and greed and pride
    Join their ungodly hands,
And this round lovely world divide
    Into opposing lands.

But let some crucial hour of pain
    Sound from the tower of time,
Then consciousness of brotherhood
Wakes in each heart the latent good,
    And men become sublime.
As swarming insects of the night,
    Fly when the sun bursts in,
Self fades, before love's radiant light,
    And all the world is kin.

God, what a place this earth would be
    If that uplifting thought,
Born of some vast world accident,
Into our daily lives were blent,

What is the end of each man's toil,
    Brother, O Brother?
A handful of dust in a bit of soil -
His name forgotten as centuries roll,
Though blazoned to-day on Glory's scroll;
For the lordliest work of brain or hand
Is only an imprint made on sand;
When the tidal wave sweeps over the shore
    It is there no more,
    Brother, my Brother.

Then what is the use of striving at all,
    Brother, O Brother?
Because each effort or great or small
Is a step on the long, long road that leads
To the Kingdom of Growth on the River of Deeds:
And that is the kingdom no man can gain
    Till he uses his hand and his mind and brain,
And when he has used them and learned control
    He finds his soul,
    Brother, my Brother.

And after he find...

Is brotherhood to flesh confined?
Is there no kinship of the soul?
To have it thus, I am resigned,
If 'tis my God-appointed goal;
For there are those whom I hold dear,
Who claim with me a common sire,
That we, with one accord, revere,
And love holds out midst flood and fire.

But is the family so small
Of which I fondly claim a part?
Is there no other I may call
A brother, and within my heart
Cherish for him, whate'er his name,
Or rank, or color, or his creed,
A love of pure and changeless flame,
And feel I render but his meed?

Thank God for brotherhood so broad
That all the human race may share
A kinship, never yet outlawed,
Tho' types of it have been too rare.
But bigotry is doomed to die,
And hate, a relic of the past;

        We are in ancient stories told,
        All were brothers in days of old,
        But these with facts they do not chime
        For all mankind do love the dime,
        And worship the mighty dollar,
        And admire the golden collar,
        The rich man's washed with whitest lime,
        The poor man's cover'd o'er with slime,
        But we should try to love each other
        And treat each man as our brother.

A little time agone, a few brief years,
And there was peace within our beauteous borders;
Peace, and a prosperous people, and no fears
Of war and its disorders.
Pleasure was ruling goddess of our land; with her attendant Mirth
She led a jubilant, joy-seeking band about the riant earth.

Do you recall those laughing days, my Brothers,
And those long nights that trespassed on the dawn?
Those throngs of idle dancing maids and mothers
Who lilted on and on -
Card mad, wine flushed, bejewelled and half stripped,
Yet women whose sweet mouth had never sipped
From sin's black chalice - women good at heart
Who, in the winding maze of pleasure's mart,
Had lost the sun-kissed way to wholesome pleasures of an earlier day.

Oh!    You remember them!    You filled their...

I have not the gift of vision,
    I have not the psychic ear,
And the realms that are called Elysian
    I neither see nor hear;
Yet oft when the shadows darken
    And the daylight hides its face,
The soul of me seems to hearken
    For the truths that speak through space.

They speak to me not through reason,
    They speak to me not by word;
Yet my soul would be guilty of treason
    If it did not say it had heard.
For Space has a message compelling
    To give to the ear of Earth;
And the things which the Silence is telling
    In the bosom of God have birth.

Now this is the truth as I hear it -
    That ever through good or ill,
The will of the Ruling Spirit
    Is moving and ruling still.
In the clutch of the blood-red ter...