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THE WORLD'S TOO LONG ABOUT US |
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Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge | ||
131
THE WORLD'S TOO LONG ABOUT US
The world's too long about us!—Let us go
Far from the righteous and the ignorant,
The vacant phrases of familiar cant,
The trivial loveless women and the low
Abortive men, the fashions stale and slow,
The greed of riches and the crime of want!
Far from the righteous and the ignorant,
The vacant phrases of familiar cant,
The trivial loveless women and the low
Abortive men, the fashions stale and slow,
The greed of riches and the crime of want!
Come! lest contentment dim the quenchless fire,
Come! lest we lose from life the magic spell,
The power of thought, the ceaseless miracle
Of day and night, the youth of love's desire.
Come! lest we wear the livery, take the hire,
And prove in virtuous platitudes 't is well.
Come! lest we lose from life the magic spell,
The power of thought, the ceaseless miracle
Of day and night, the youth of love's desire.
Come! lest we wear the livery, take the hire,
And prove in virtuous platitudes 't is well.
Come! lest we take the thralldom and the food,
Accept the hire and kiss the master's hand,
Or hear, obedient to the world's command,
Our praises from the Ciceronian “good”;
Or feel the shame of being understood
By those we know can never understand!
Accept the hire and kiss the master's hand,
Or hear, obedient to the world's command,
Our praises from the Ciceronian “good”;
Or feel the shame of being understood
By those we know can never understand!
Earth knows our bodies, heaven our conscious souls!
The world is ignorant of all but name;
Come! let us fear its praise and seek its blame,
Take larger motives that ignore its goals,
And blow a fire within life's smouldering coals
To scar its social erebus with flame!
The world is ignorant of all but name;
Come! let us fear its praise and seek its blame,
132
And blow a fire within life's smouldering coals
To scar its social erebus with flame!
Come!—We can feel, dilate with endless air,
The journeying seas, or watch our Paris take
New moods of laughter, or the sun-God shake,
Low down the Nile, the splendour of his hair.
Extreme in joy, extreme in soul's despair,
Come! Let us dare to go for sweet life's sake!
The journeying seas, or watch our Paris take
New moods of laughter, or the sun-God shake,
Low down the Nile, the splendour of his hair.
Extreme in joy, extreme in soul's despair,
Come! Let us dare to go for sweet life's sake!
Life's choice is this: the world or all the rest.
The heights are lonely and the depths are dark;
Haply too weak of soul I miss the mark
And fall below the world's unloveliest
Level of littleness—I say the best
Is mine, I venture life's extremest test.
No failures quench the Truth's eternal spark!
The heights are lonely and the depths are dark;
Haply too weak of soul I miss the mark
And fall below the world's unloveliest
Level of littleness—I say the best
Is mine, I venture life's extremest test.
No failures quench the Truth's eternal spark!
Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge | ||