Classic Poem

Love-born, the child in grace and strength immortal
Increased with years for service of her time;
She came each day to some new wonder-portal,
Thresholds of life and thoughts of things sublime.
Through all the silence of her soul was ringing
The song of life the heart of God was singing.

The stream into the ocean flows unceasing;
All things are greater for renewing strife;
True wealth is spending, using is increasing,
And love is loveliest when it most is life.
Make love the purpose in the life of men
And earth shall be a Paradise again.

No more was motherhood, with justice girded,
Submissive while the nation bruised its heart;
Children no more in dens of filth were herded,
But lived the fuller life of truth and art.
Theirs was the earth and all that is therein
Of loveliness that man for them could win.

Yet from the hideous past with slavery reeking,
Came hissing down the eloquent, stern years
Nightmares of old oppressions, phantoms speaking
Of shame and lust, of tyranny and tears.
What wonder if a woman missed the goal
Sometimes, and stooped to juggle with her soul?

A fadeless glory in her shield is shining,
Despite all dints of war, all stains of blood;
Its deepest scars are proof of her refining,
The hall-mark on the gold of womanhood.
A thousand years of affluence are less
Than one great hour of triumph o'er distress.

No more dependent, woman now was braver
Than he who would have bartered for her life;
Who, for a price, would pledge himself to save her
From honest weariness, from toil and strife.
'Twas here the tempter tried, in honour's chain,
The subtlest, weakest link, but tried in vain.

Emerging from an age-long false condition,
From weakness born of bondage and despair,
From cunning grown to wondrous intuition —
A weapon for defence men seldom wear,
She struggled up life's road and stood at last
A queen — the conqueror of her baser past.

She trimmed her lamp in ancient halls of pleading
Where empty precedents are held in awe,
And soon the light of equity was leading
To fairer judgments and to saner law.
Oppression from the courts of earth had fled
And hidden darkly with the cryptic dead.

The walls of home were now no more regarded
As utmost limits of a woman's life;
No more her tender love was fiercely warded
With hateful jealousy and wounding strife.
The gates of life flew open at her nod,
And flowers blushed to beauty where she trod.

Great-hearted woman! Through the wistful ages
Made sacred by the pathos of your tears,
Calm in your soul amid the storm that rages
Along the foaming coast-line of the years,
Guard, as the gentle mother of our race,
In every child, the image of God's face.

The living world is bathed in softer beauty
Since you have found your final full release;
So all shall reach, through sacrifice and duty,
The portals of unfathomable peace.
Life is not life wherein is no emprise;
The heart is dead when aspiration dies.

Loud trumpets blare along the purple ranges;
Life! is the call that leaps from peak to peak
Till every heart its central purpose changes,
For in that word, each hears the Lord Christ speak.
His voice eternal flames through every soul
And pushes service to Love's highest goal.