A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

Makes that and th'action fine.

178

GEORGE HERBERT

OUR OWN

If I had known, in the morning,

How wearily all the day

The words unkind would trouble my mind.

I spoke when you went away,

I had been more careful, darling,

Nor given you needless pain;

But we vex our own with look and tone
We might never take back again.

For though in the quiet evening,

You may give me the kiss of peace, Yet it well might be that never for me The pain of the heart should cease!

How many go forth at morning

Who never come home at night;

And hearts have broken for harsh words spoken That sorrow can ne'er set right.

We have careful thought for the stranger,
And smiles for the sometime guest,
But oft for our own the bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best.
Ah, lip with the curve impatient,

Ah, brow with the shade of scorn,

'Twere a cruel fate were the night too late To undo the work of the morn.

ANONYMOUS

179

THE UPRIGHT MAN

The man of life upright, whose guiltless heart is free

From all dishonest deeds and thoughts of vanity; The man whose silent days in harmless joys are spent,

Whom hopes cannot delude, nor fortune discontent; That man needs neither towers nor armor for de

fence,

Nor secret vaults to fly from thunder's violence;
He, only, can behold with unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep and terrors of the skies;

Thus scorning all the care that fate or fortune

brings,

He makes the heaven his book, his wisdom heavenly

things;

Good thoughts his only friends, his wealth a well

spent age,

The earth his sober inn and quiet pilgrimage.

180

FRANCIS BACON

66

THE ANSWER

Allah, Allah!" cried the sick man, racked with pain the long night through;

Till with prayer his heart grew tender, till his lips like honey grew.

But at morning came the Tempter; said, "Call louder, child of Pain!

See if Allah ever hears, or answers 'Here am I' again."

Like a stab the cruel cavil through his brain and pulses went ;

To his heart an icy coldness, to his brain a darkness

sent.

Then before him stands Elias; says, "My child, why thus dismayed?

Dost repent thy former fervor? Is thy soul of prayer afraid?"

"Ah!" he cried, "I've called so often; never heard the 'Here am I';

And I thought, God will not pity; will not turn on me His eye."

Then the grave Elias answered, "God said, 'Rise, Elias, go;

Speak to him, the sorely tempted; lift him from his gulf of woe.

"Tell him that his very longing is itself an answering cry;

That his prayer, "Come, gracious Allah!" is my answer, "Here am I."'"

Every inmost aspiration is God's angel undefiled;

And in every О my Father!" slumbers deep a "Here, my child!"

DSCHELADEDDIN

Translation by Dr. James Freeman Clarke

181

OPPORTUNITY

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:-
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged

A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's ban-

ner

Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle's edge,

And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel-
That blue blade that the king's son bears, but this
Blunt thing!" he snapt and flung it from his hand,
And, lowering, crept away, and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,

And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh, he hewed the enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL

182

A TURKISH LEGEND

A certain pasha, dead five thousand years,
Once from his harem fled in sudden tears,

And had this sentence on the city's gate
Deeply engraven, "Only God is great."

So these four words above the city's noise
Hung like the accents of an angel's voice,
And evermore from the high barbican,
Saluted each returning caravan.

Lost is that city's glory. Every gust
Lifts, with crisp leaves, the unknown pasha's dust,

And all is ruin, save one wrinkled gate

Whereon is written, "Only God is great."

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH