Poems for Men

By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain,To seek another's profit, And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace--Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease;And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hope to naught.

Take up the White Man's burden-- No tawdry rule of kings,But toil of serf and sweeper-- The tale of common things.The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread,Go make them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden-- And reap his old reward;The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard--The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--"Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden-- Ye dare not stoop to less--Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness;By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do,The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden-- Have done with childish days--The lightly proffered laurel The easy, ungrudged praise.Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years,Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

An' nen he spades in our garden, too,An' does most things 'at boys can't do.--He clumbed clean up in our big treeAn' shooked a' apple down fer me--An' nother'n', too, fer 'Lizabuth Ann--An' nother'n', too, fer the Raggedy Man.--Ain't he a' awful kind Raggedy Man?Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

An' the Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymesAn' tells 'em, ef I be good, sometimes:Knows 'bout Giunts, an' Griffuns, an' Elves,An' the Squidgicum-Squees 'at swallers therselves!An', wite by the pump in our pasture-lot,He showed me the hole 'at the Wunks is got,'At lives 'way deep in the ground, an' canTurn into me, er 'Lizabuth Ann!Er Ma, er Pa, er the Raggedy Man!Ain't he a funny old Raggedy Man?Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

The Raggedy Man--one time when heWas makin' a little bow-n'-orry fer me,Says, "When you're big like your Pa is,Air you go' to keep a fine store like his--An' be a rich merchunt--an' wear fine clothes?--Er what air you go' to be, goodness knows?"An' nen he laughed at 'Lizabuth Ann,An' I says "'M go' to be a Raggedy Man!--I'm ist go' to be a nice Raggedy Man!"Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!

Or, haply, prest with cares and woes, Too soon thou hast beganTo wander forth with me to mourn The miseries of man.

‘The sun that overhangs yon moors, Out-spreading far and wide,Where hundreds labour to support A haughty lordling’s pride—I’ve seen yon weary winter-sun Twice forty times return,And ev’ry time has added proofs That man was made to mourn.

‘O man! while in thy early years, How prodigal of time!Mis-spending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious youthful prime!Alternate follies take the sway; Licentious passions burn;Which tenfold force give nature’s law, That man was made to mourn.

‘Look not alone on youthful prime, Or manhood’s active might;Man then is useful to his kind, Supported is his right;But see him on the edge of life, With cares and sorrows worn,Then age and want, oh! ill-match’d pair! Show man was made to mourn.

‘A few seem favourites of fate, In pleasure’s lap carest;Yet think not all the rich and great Are likewise truly blest.But oh! what crowds in ev’ry land All wretched and forlorn,Thro’ weary life this lesson learn— That man was made to mourn.

‘Many and sharp the num’rous ills Inwoven with our frame!More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame!And man, whose heaven-erected face The smiles of love adorn—Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!

‘See yonder poor o’erlabour’d wight, So abject, mean, and vile,Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil;And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn,Unmindful tho’ a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn.

‘If I’m design’d yon lordling’s slave,— By nature’s law design’d,—Why was an independent wish E’er planted in my mind?If not, why am I subject to His cruelty, or scorn?Or why has man the will and pow’r To make his fellow mourn?

‘Yet let not this too much, my son, Disturb thy youthful breast;This partial view of human-kind Is surely not the last!The poor oppressèd honest man Had never sure been bornHad there not been some recompense To comfort those that mourn!

‘O Death, the poor man’s dearest friend, The kindest and the best!Welcome the hour my agèd limbs Are laid with thee at rest!The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, From pomp and pleasure torn;But oh; a blest relief to those That weary-laden mourn.’

Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where'er I go,That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound,To me alone there came a thought of grief:A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong.The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,--No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday;-- Thou child of joy,Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd boy!

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I seeThe heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal,The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning This sweet May morning, And the children are pulling On every side In a thousand valleys far and wide Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:-- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! --But there's a tree, of many, one,A single field which I have look'd upon,Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat:Whither is fled the visionary gleam?Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness And not in utter nakednessBut trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy!Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing boy,But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy,The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended;At length the man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,And, even with something of a mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she canTo make her foster-child, her inmate, Man, Forget the glories he hath knownAnd that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,A six years' darling of a pigmy size!See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,With light upon him from his father's eyes!See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,Some fragment from his dream of human life,Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongueTo dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and prideThe little actor cons another part;Filling from time to time his "humorous stage"With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,That life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul's immensity;Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keepThy heritage, thou eye among the blind,That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-- Mighty prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths do restWhich we are toiling all our lives to find;In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;Thou, over whom thy immortalityBroods like the day, a master o'er a slave,A presence which is not to be put by;Thou little child, yet glorious in the mightOf heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,Why with such earnest pains dost thou provokeThe years to bring the inevitable yoke,Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,And custom lie upon thee with a weightHeavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That nature yet remembers What was so fugitive!The thought of our past years in me doth breedPerpetual benediction: not indeedFor that which is most worthy to be blest,Delight and liberty, the simple creedOf childhood, whether busy or at rest,With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: --Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings of a creatureMoving about in worlds not realised,High instincts, before which our mortal natureDid tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may,Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us--cherish--and have power to makeOur noisy years seem moments in the beingOf the eternal silence: truths that wake, To perish never;Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour Nor man nor boyNor all that is at enmity with joy,Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence, in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be,Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither; Can in a moment travel thither--And see the children sport upon the shore,And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound! We, in thought, will join your throng Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May!What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind, In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be, In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering, In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,Forebode not any severing of our loves!Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;I only have relinquish'd one delightTo live beneath your more habitual sway;I love the brooks which down their channels fretEven more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet;The clouds that gather round the setting sunDo take a sober colouring from an eyeThat hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;Another race hath been, and other palms are won.Thanks to the human heart by which we live,Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,To me the meanest flower that blows can giveThoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

My listening angel heard the prayer,And, calmly smiling, said,"If I but touch thy silvered hair,Thy hasty wish hath sped.

"But is there nothing in thy trackTo bid thee fondly stay,While the swift seasons hurry backTo find the wished-for day?"

"Ah, truest soul of womankind!Without thee what were life?One bliss I cannot leave behind:I'll take--my--precious--wife!"

The angel took a sapphire penAnd wrote in rainbow dew,The man would be a boy again,And be a husband, too!

"And is there nothing yet unsaid,Before the change appears?Remember, all their gifts have fledWith those dissolving years."

"Why, yes;" for memory would recallMy fond paternal joys;"I could not bear to leave them all--I'll take--my--girl--and--boys."

The smiling angel dropped his pen,--"Why, this will never do;The man would be a boy again,And be a father, too!"

And so I laughed,--my laughter wokeThe household with its noise,--And wrote my dream, when morning broke,To please the gray-haired boys.

Woe to the English soldiery That little dread us near!On them shall light at midnight A strange and sudden fear;When, waking to their tents on fire, They grasp their arms in vain,And they who stand to face us Are beat to earth again;And they who fly in terror deem A mighty host behind,And hear the tramp of thousands Upon the hollow wind.

Then sweet the hour that brings release From danger and from toil;We talk the battle over, And share the battle's spoil.The woodland rings with laugh and shout, As if a hunt were up,And woodland flowers are gathered To crown the soldier's cup.With merry songs we mock the wind That in the pine-top grieves,And slumber long and sweetly On beds of oaken leaves.

Well knows the fair and friendly moon The band that Marion leads,--The glitter of their rifles, The scampering of their steeds.'Tis life to guide the fiery barb Across the moonlight plain;'Tis life to feel the night-wind That lifts his tossing mane.A moment in the British camp-- A moment--and awayBack to the pathless forest, Before the peep of day.

Grave men there are by broad Santee, Grave men with hoary hairs;Their hearts are all with Marion, For Marion are their prayers.And lovely ladies greet our band With kindliest welcoming,With smiles like those of summer, And tears like those of spring.For them we wear these trusty arms, And lay them down no moreTill we have driven the Briton Forever from our shore.

When the one darling of our widowhead,The nursling Grief,Is dead,And no dews blur our eyesTo see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,Perchance we may,Where now this night is day,And even through faith of still averted feet,Making full circle of our banishment,Amazèd meet;The bitter journey to the bourne so sweetSeasoning the termless feast of our contentWith tears of recognition never dry.

Your harrowing praise.Well, it was wellTo hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;For, on a table drawn beside his head,He had put, within his reach,A box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,A piece of glass abraded by the beach,And six or seven shells,A bottle with bluebells,And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,To comfort his sad heart.So when that night I pray’dTo God, I wept, and said:Ah, when at last we lie with trancèd breath,Not vexing Thee in death,And Thou rememberest of what toysWe made our joys,How weakly understoodThy great commanded good,Then, fatherly not lessThan I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’

The hope, the fear, the jealous care,The exalted portion of the painAnd power of love, I cannot share,But wear the chain.

But 'tis not thus--and 'tis not here--Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,Where glory decks the hero's bier,Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field,Glory and Greece, around me see!The Spartan, borne upon his shield,Was not more free.

Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!)Awake, my spirit! Think through whomThy life-blood tracks its parent lake,And then strike home!

Tread those reviving passions down,Unworthy manhood I--unto theeIndifferent should the smile or frownOf beauty be.

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?The land of honorable deathIs here:--up to the field, and giveAway thy breath!

Seek out--less often sought than found--A soldier's grave, for thee the best;Then look around, and choose thy ground,And take thy rest.

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,Weigh thy opinion against Providence:Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such,--Say, here he gives too little, there too much;Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust,--If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there;Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies;All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes:Men would be angels, angels would be gods.Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels, men rebel;And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf Order, sins against the Eternal Cause.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body Nature is, and God the soul:That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,Lives through all life, extends through all extent,Spreads undivided, operates unspent:Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:To him no high, no low, no great, no small;He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. Cease then, nor order imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.Know thy own point: This kind, this due degreeOf blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.Submit.--In this or any other sphere,Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear;Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,Or in the natal or the mortal hour.All nature is but art unknown to thee;All chance, direction which thou canst not see;All discord, harmony not understood;All partial evil, universal good:And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,One truth is clear--Whatever is, is right.

Order is Heaven's first law: and, this confest,Some are and must be greater than the rest,More rich, more wise; but who infers from henceThat such are happier, shocks all common-sense.Heaven to mankind impartial we confess,If all are equal in their happiness:But mutual wants this happiness increase;All nature's difference keeps all nature's peace.Condition, circumstance, is not the thing:Bliss is the same in subject or in king,In who obtain defence or who defend,In him who is or him who finds a friend;Heaven breathes through every member of the wholeOne common blessing, as one common soul.

His long career of life again,He would do all that he had done."

Ah, 'tis not thus the voice, that dwellsIn sober birth-days, speaks to me;Far otherwise--of time it tellsLavished unwisely, carelessly;Of counsel mocked: of talents, madeHaply for high and pure designs,But oft, like Israel's incense, laidUpon unholy, earthly shrines;Of nursing many a wrong desire;Of wandering after Love too far,And taking every meteor-fireThat crossed my pathway, for a star.All this it tells, and, could I traceThe imperfect picture o'er again,With power to add, retouch, effaceThe lights and shades, the joy and pain,How little of the past would stay!How quickly all should melt away--All--but that Freedom of the Mind,Which hath been more than wealth to me;Those friendships, in my boyhood twined,And kept till now unchangingly;And that dear home, that saving-ark,Where Love's true light at last I've found,Cheering within, when all grows dark,And comfortless, and stormy round!

And the high gods took in handFire, and the falling of tears,And a measure of sliding sandFrom under the feet of the years;And froth and drift of the sea,And dust of the laboring earth;And bodies of things to beIn the houses of death and of birth;And wrought with weeping and laughter,And fashioned with loathing and love,With life before and after,And death beneath and above,For a day and a night and a morrow,That his strength might endure for a span,With travail and heavy sorrow,The holy Spirit of man.

From the winds of the north and the southThey gathered as unto strife;They breathed upon his mouth,They filled his body with life;Eyesight and speech they wroughtFor the veils of the soul therein,A time for labor and thought,A time to serve and to sin;They gave him light in his ways,And love, and a space for delight,And beauty and length of days,And night, and sleep in the night.His speech is a burning fire;With his lips he travaileth;In his heart is a blind desire,In his eyes foreknowledge of death;He weaves, and is clothed with derisionSows, and he shall not reap;His life is a watch or a visionBetween a sleep and a sleep.

With common cares and faces kind,With pains and joys each morning brought?Ah, old, and worn, and tired we findLife's more amusing than we thought!

Though youth "turns spectre-thin and dies,"To mourn for youth we're not inclined;We set our souls on salmon flies,We whistle where we once repined.Confound the woes of human-kind!By Heaven we're "well deceived," I wot;Who hum, contented or resigned,"Life's more amusing than we thought"!

ENVOYO nate mecum, worn and linedOur faces show, but that is naught;Our hearts are young 'neath wrinkled rind:Life's more amusing than we thought!

His consciousness has easy play.He's sensitive to grief and pain,Has tail, a spine, and bears a brain,And everything that fits the stateOf creatures we call vertebrate.But age comes on; with sudden shockHe sticks his head against a rock!His tail drops off, his eye drops in,His brain's absorbed into his skin;He does not move, nor feel, nor knowThe tidal water's ebb and flow,But still abides, unstirred, alone,A sucker sticking to a stone.

And we, his children, truly weIn youth are, like the Tadpole, free.And where we would we blithely go,Have brains and hearts, and feel and know.Then Age comes on! To Habit weAffix ourselves and are not free;The Ascidian's rooted to a rock,And we are bond-slaves of the clock;Our rocks are Medicine--Letters--Law,From these our heads we cannot draw:Our loves drop off, our hearts drop in,And daily thicker grows our skin.

Ah, scarce we live, we scarcely knowThe wide world's moving ebb and flow,The clanging currents ring and shock,But we are rooted to the rock.And thus at ending of his span,Blind, deaf, and indolent, does ManRevert to the Ascidian.