For while a youth is lost in soaring thought, / And while a mind grows sweet and beautiful, / And while a spring-tide coming lights the earth, / And while a child, and while a flower is born, / And while one wrong cries for redress and finds / A soul to answer, still the world is young.
From out the throng and stress of lies, / From out the painful noise of sighs, / One voice of comfort seems to rise, / It is the meaner part that dies.
Hell lies near, / Around us, as does heaven, and in the world, / Which is our Hades, still the chequered souls, / Compact of good and ill—not all accurst, / Nor altogether blest—a few brief years / Travel the little journey of their lives, / They know not to what end.
Life, full life, / Full-flowered, full-fruited, reared from homely earth, / Rooted in duty,… this is the prize / I hold most dear, more precious than the fruit / Of knowledge or of love.
Live on, brave lives, chained to the narrow round / Of Duty; live, expend yourselves, and make / The orb of Being wheel onward steadfastly / Upon its path—the Lord of Life alone / Knows to what goal of Good; work on, live on.
Rise, Christopher! thou hast found thy King, and turn / Back to the earth, for I have need of thee. / Thou hast sustained the whole world, bearing me, / The Lord of earth and heaven.
The slow wheel turns, / The cycles round themselves and grow complete, / The world’s year whitens to the harvest-tide, / And one word only am I (Psyche) sent to say … / To all things living, and the word is “Love.”
There is a life which taketh not its hues / From earth or earthly things; and so grows pure / And higher than the petty cares of men, / And is a blessed life and glorified.
These fair tales, which we know so beautiful, / Show only finer than our lives to-day / Because their voice was clearer, and they found / A sacred bard to sing them.
To have heard the voice / Of Godhead in the winds and in the seas, / To have known him in the circling of the suns, / And in the changeful fates and lives of men.
Waft yourselves, yearning souls, upon the stars; / Sow yourselves on the wandering winds of space; / Watch patient all your days, if your eyes take / Some dim, cold ray of knowledge. The dull world / Hath need of you—the purblind, slothful world!
We in turn / Shall one day be Time’s ancients, and inspire / The wiser, higher race, which yet shall sing; / Because to sing is human, and high thought / Grows rhythmic ere its close.
What shall be, shall be—that is all; / To one great Will we stand and fall, / “The Scheme hath need”—we ask not why, / And in this faith we live or die.
