The Lure o’ Life
WHEN my life has enough of love, and my spirit enough of mirth,
When the ocean no longer beckons me, when the roadway calls no more,
Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day!
When the lash of the wave bewilders, and I shrink from the sting of the rain,
When I hate the gloom of Thy steel-gray wastes, and slink to the lamp-lit shore,
Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires, and fling me on my way!
When I house me close in a twilit inn, where I brood by a dying fire,
When I kennel and cringe with fat content, where a pillow and loaf are sure,
Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day!
When I quail at the snow on the uplands, when I crawl from the glare of the sun,
When the trails that are lone invite me not, and the halfway lamps allure,
Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires, and fling me on my way!
When the wine has all ebbed from an April, when the Autumn of life forgets
The call and the lure of the widening West, the wind in the straining rope,
Oh, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day!
When I waken to hear adventures strange throng valiantly forth by night,
To the sting of the salt-spume, dust of the plain, and width of the western slope,
Oh, purge me in Thy primal fires, and fling me on my way!
When swarthy and careless and grim they throng out under my rose-grown sash,
And I–I bide me there by the coals, and I know not heat nor hope,
Then, on the anvil of Thy wrath, remake me, God, that day!
