WHAT MIGHT BE DONE

CHARLES MACKAY

WHAT might be done if men were wise, What glorious deeds, my suffering brother, Would they unite

In love and right,

And cease their scorn of one another?

Oppression's heart might be imbued
With kindling drops of loving-kindness;
And knowledge pour,

From shore to shore,

Light on the eyes of mental blindness.

All slavery, warfare, lies and wrongs,
All vice and crime, might die together;
And wine and corn,

To each man born,

Be free as warmth in summer weather.

The meanest wretch that ever trod,
The deepest sunk in guilt and sorrow,
Might stand erect

In self-respect,

And share the teeming world to-morrow.

What might be done? This might be done, And more than this, my suffering brother, More than the tongue

E'er said or sung,

If men were wise, and loved each other.

IN TIMES OF PEACE

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

"TWAS said: "When roll of drum and battle's roar Shall cease upon the earth, O, then no more

66 The deed, the race, of heroes in the land."

But scarce that word was breathed when one small hand

Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong

That had its victims crushed through ages long;

Some woman set her pale and quivering face,
Firm as a rock, against a man's disgrace;

A little child suffered in silence lest

His savage pain should wound a mother's breast;

Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet down

And risked, in Truth's great name, the synod's frown;

A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws,

Did that which suddenly drew a world's applause;

And one to the pest his lithe young body gave
That he a thousand thousand lives might save.

VOICES OF THE SPIRITS

From Prometheus Unbound

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

FIRST SPIRIT

ON a battle-trumpet's blast
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
'Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant's banner torn,
Gathering round me, onward borne,
There was mingled many a cry —
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound above, around,
One sound beneath, around, above,
Was moving; 'twas the soul of love;
'Twas the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.

SECOND SPIRIT

A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably;
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Begirt with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half.
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh.

Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O'er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split,
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy

His plank, then plunged aside to die.

THIRD SPIRIT

I sat beside a sage's bed,

And the lamp was burning red
Near the book where he had fed,
When a Dream with plumes of flame
To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire's lightning feet;
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.

FOURTH SPIRIT

On a poet's lips I slept

Dreaming like a love-adept

In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,

But feeds on the aërial kisses

Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume

The yellow bees in the ivy bloom,
Nor heed nor see what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality!

One of these awakened me,

And I sped to succor thee.

"WHEN THERE IS PEACE"

AUSTIN DOBSON

"When there is Peace our land no more
Will be the land we knew of yore."

Thus do our facile seers foretell
The truth that none can buy or sell

And e'en the wisest must ignore.
When we have bled at every pore,

Shall we still strive for gear and store?
Will it be Heaven? Will it be Hell?
When there is Peace.

This let us pray for, this implore:

That, all base dreams thrust out at door,
We may in loftier aims excel

And, like men waking from a spell,
Grow stronger, nobler, than before,
When there is Peace.