An Incident in a Railroad Car
He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough
Pressed round to hear the praise of one
Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff,
As homespun as their own.
And, when he read, they forward leaned,
Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears,
His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned
From humble smiles and tears.
Slowly there grew a tender awe,
Sun-like, o’er faces brown and hard,
As if in him who read they felt and saw
Some presence of the bard.
It was a sight for sin and wrong
And slavish tyranny to see,
A sight to make our faith more pure and strong
In high humanity.
I thought, these men will carry hence
Promptings their former life above,
And something of a finer reverence
For beauty, truth, and love.
God scatters love on every side
Freely among his children all,
And always hearts are lying open wide,
Wherein some grains may fall.
There is no wind but soweth seeds
Of a more true and open life,
Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled deeds,
With wayside beauty rife.
We find within these souls of ours
Some wild germs of a higher birth,
Which in the poet’s tropic heart bear flowers
Whose fragrance fills the earth.
Within the hearts of all men lie
These promises of wider bliss,
Which blossom into hopes that cannot die,
In sunny hours like this.
All that hath been majestical
In life or death, since time began,
Is native in the simple heart of all,
The angel heart of man.
And thus, among the untaught poor,
Great deeds and feelings find a home,
That cast in shadow all the golden lore
Of classic Greece and Rome.
O mighty brother-soul of man,
Where’er thou art, in low or high,
Thy skyey arches with exulting span
O’er-roof infinity!
All thoughts that mould the age begin
Deep down within the primitive soul,
And from the many slowly upward win
To one who grasps the whole:
In his wide brain the feeling deep
That struggled on the many’s tongue
Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap
O’er the weak thrones of wrong.
All thought begins in feeling,-wide
In the great mass its base is hid,
And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified,
A moveless pyramid.
Nor is he far astray, who deems
That every hope, which rises and grows broad
In the world’s heart, by ordered impulse streams
From the great heart of God.
God wills, man hopes: in common souls
Hope is but vague and undefined,
Till from the poet’s tongue the message rolls
A blessing to his kind.
Never did Poesy appear
So full of heaven to me, as when
I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear
To the lives of coarsest men.
It may be glorious to write
Thoughts that shall glad the two or three
High souls, like those far stars that come in sight
Once in a century;-
But better far it is to speak
One simple word, which now and then
Shall waken their free nature in the weak
And friendless sons of men;
To write some earnest verse or line,
Which, seeking not the praise of art,
Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine
In the untutored heart.
He who doth this, in verse or prose,
May be forgotten in his day,
But surely shall be crowned at last with those
Who live and speak for aye.
