O-DWELLERS ON THE LOVELY EARTH, Why will ye break your rest and mirth To weary us with fruitless prayer; Why will ye toil and take such care For children's children yet unborn, And garner store of strife and scorn To gain a scarce-remembered name, Cumbered with lies and soiled with shame? And if the gods care not for you, What is this folly ye must do To win some mortal's feeble heart? O fools! when each man plays his part, And heeds his fellow little more Than these blue waves that kiss the shore Take heed of how the daisies grow. O fools! and if ye could but know How fair a world to you is given. O brooder on the hills of heaven, When for my sin thou drav'st me forth, Hadst thou forgot what this was worth, Thine own hand had made? The tears of men, The death of threescore years and ten, The trembling of the timorous race -- Had these things so bedimmed the place Thine own hand made, thou couldst not know To what a heaven the earth might grow If fear beneath the earth were laid, If hope failed not, nor love decayed. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FLIGHT OF THE WAR-EAGLE by OBADIAH CYRUS AURINGER ROSES IN THE SUBWAY by DANA BURNET TO THE BEE BALM by JOHN BURROUGHS BEATEN TO DEATH by CAROLINE CLIVE WHEN ZEPHRYS BLOW by SAMUEL TRAVERS CLOVER IMITATIONS AD LYRAM by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE PARAPHRASE OF PSALM 46. HEXAMETERS by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |