THOUGH Love redeem us, do we stake Our souls upon the mighty bond, As brothers, serve for others' sake, Till love in hatred's self awake, And love, on this side death, respond To love beyond? Is life, this little life, so long, That we its wasting hours should spend In cherishing eternal wrong, Or beckoning passions that will throng Our reckless path until the end, To smite and rend? If, clutching pleasure, shirking pain, We forfeit manhood in the act, What profit, though the world we gain And lose ourselves; too late, in vain, Find love is gone, and we enact The devil's pact?— From infinite hope and fellowship Have rung our own dividing knell, And deep in isolation dip, Until the heaven, whose key we grip, The selfish heaven we guard so well, Is lonely hell?— Yet once we felt the life that fills The boundless universe; and, lo, It sweeps through myriad stars, and thrills The dewy flowers, the dreaming hills And all the souls that to and fro Still come and go! Through sorrow, and loss, and noble rage, The rapture of the world is wrought, Of every country, every age, The one immortal heritage, Above all joy, beyond all thought, With wisdom fraught,— The deepening concord, blissful, tense, When sympathies divinely mate, Or differing notes in long suspense, Uniting, meet their recompense, And, storming music's inmost gate, Fulfil their fate! Lost! Lost! Then are we lost indeed If this, our life, we cast away In snatching all the power we need To choke our own imperious greed, Till we, self-murdered day by day, Lie deep in clay! The Love once slain, divinely crowned, Not as a Servant but a Son, Feels every wound when, trampled, bound, We suffer and no help is found. He died that all men might be one: His will be done! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...INDEPENDENCE DAY, 1956, A FAIRY TALE by JAMES GALVIN RETROSPECT by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON STUDY FOR A GEOGRAPHICAL TRAIL; 5. MARYLAND by CLARENCE MAJOR AT SAGAMORE HILL by EDGAR LEE MASTERS CLASS SONG (WHICH WILL BE SUNG ON THE 22ND OF FEBRUARY) by GEORGE SANTAYANA |