Classic Poem

For you may not hide from God your dealings, what though in secrecy
deep in your heart of hearts you seal it. Nathless He knoweth it,
Knoweth and taketh note in patience, sure of His reckoning
till the day of the great counting, waiteth or hasteneth.
War! Ye have learned it all, its teachings, well have ye tasted them.
These no tales are that I tell you. Each is a certainty.
A smouldering coal ye flung it lightly, blindly despising it.
Lo, into raging flame it leapeth, wind-lit, destroyeth you.
Ye are ground as corn by hate's ill-grinding, flat on her grinding skin.
Nay, a too fruitful camel she. Twins hath she borne to you,
Sinister sons of fear and anger, milk-fed on bitterness;
dark as his, Aad's, their nursing. Lo, she is weaned of them.
And her hand is large to rain you harvests, evil the wealth of them.
No such plenty Irak hath garnered, hell-grain and hate-money.


I am weary of life who bear its burdens fourscore and how many
years of glory and grief counted. Well may he weary be.
I know to-day, the day before it, ay, and the days that were,
yet of to-morrow I know nothing. Blind are the eyes of me.
I have seen Fate strike out in the darkness, strike like a blind camel:
some it touched died straight, some lingered on to decrepitude.

I have learned that he who giveth nothing, deaf to his friends' begging,
loosed shall be to the world's tooth-strokes: fools' feet shall tread on him;
That he that doeth for his name's sake fair deeds shall further it,
but he that of men's praise is careless dwindleth in dignity;
That he, the lord of wealth, who spendeth naught of his heaped money,
him his kinsfolk shall hold lightly: children shall mouth at him;
That he who keepeth faith shall find faith; who in simplicity
shall pursue the ways accustomed, no tongue shall wag at him;
That he who flieth his fate shall meet it, not, though a sky-ladder
he should climb, shall his fear fend him: dark death shall noose him down;
That he who gifteth the unworthy, spendthrift through idleness,
praised shall be to his dispraising, shamed at his fool-doing;
That he, who shall refuse the lance-butts borne by the peace-bearers,
him the lance-heads shall find fenceless, naked the flesh of him;
That he who guardeth not his tent-floor, with the whole might of him,
cold shall be his hearth-stone broken, ay, though he smote at none;
That he who fleeth his kin shall fare far, foes for his guest-fellows;
that he who his own face befouleth none else shall honor him;
That he, who casteth not the burdens laid on the back of him,
sheer disgrace shall be his portion, waged as he merited;
That whatso a man hath by nature, wit-wealth or vanity,
hidden deep, the day shall prove it: all shall be manifest.
For how many sat wise while silent, yet was their foolishness
proved when their too much, too little, slid through their mouth-slitting!
The tongue is the strong man's half; the other half is the heart of him:
all the rest is a brute semblance, rank corporeality.
Truly, folly in the old is grievous; no cure is known for it:
yet may the young their soul's unwisdom win to new sanity.

We asked once, and you gave a guerdon—twice and again you gave:
only the mouth that hath no silence endeth in emptiness.