George Frederick Cameron
The Golden Text
YOU ask for fame or power?
Then up and take for text:
This is my hour,
And not the next, nor next!
Oh, wander not in ways
Of ease or indolence!
Swift come the days,
And swift the days go hence.
Strike! while the hand is strong:
Strike! while you can and may
Strength goes ere long,—
Even yours will pass away.
Sweet seem the fields, and green,
In which you fain would lie:
Sweet seems the scene
That glads the idle eye:
Soft seems the path you tread,
And balmy soft the air,—
Heaven overhead
And all the earth seem fair:
But, would your heart aspire
To noble things,—to claim
Bard’s, statesman’s fire—
Some measure of their fame;
Or, would you seek and find
Their secret of success
With mortal kind?
Then, up from idleness!
Up—up! all fame, all power
Lies in this golden text:—
This is my hour—
And not the next, nor next!
Is There a God?
IS there a God, then, above us?
I ask it again and again:
Is there a good God to love us—
A God who is mindful of men?
Is there a God who remembers
That we have our nights as our noons?
Our dark and our dismal Decembers
As well as our garden-gay Junes?
On Tiptoe
STANDING on tiptoe ever since my youth,
Striving to grasp the future just above,
I hold at length the only future—Truth,
And Truth is Love.
I feel as one who, being awhile confined,
Sees drop to dust about him all his bars:—
The clay grows less, and, leaving it, the mind
Dwells with the stars.
What Matters It?
WHAT reck we of the creeds of men?—
We see them—we shall see again.
What reck we of the tempest’s shock?
What reck we where our anchor lock?
On golden marl or mould—
In salt-sea flower or riven rock—
What matter—so it hold?
What matters it the spot we fill
On Earth’s green sod when all is said?—
When feet and hands and heart are still
And all our pulses quieted?
When hate or love can kill nor thrill,—
When we are done with life, and dead?
So we be haunted night nor day
By any sin that we have sinned,
What matter where we dream away
The ages?—In the isles of Ind,
In Tybee, Cuba, or Cathay,
Or in some world of winter wind?
It may be I would wish to sleep
Beneath the wan, white stars of June,
And hear the southern breezes creep
Between me and the mellow moon;
But so I do not wake to weep
At any night or any noon,
And so the generous gods allow
Repose and peace from evil dreams,
It matters little where or how
My couch be spread:—by moving streams,
Or on some ancient mountain’s brow
Kist by the morn’s or sunset’s beams.
For we shall rest; the brain that planned,
That thought or wrought or well or ill,
At gaze like Joshua’s moon shall stand,
Not working any work or will,
While eye and lip and heart and hand
Shall all be still—shall all be still!