BEST LOVED POEMS

by Richard Charlton MacKenzie

  Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine,

  Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine,

  Christmas where snow peaks stand solemn and white

  Christmas where cornfields stand sunny and bright.

  Christmas where children are hopeful and gay,

  Christmas where old men are patient and gray,

  Christmas where peace, like a dove in his flight,

  Broods o’er brave men in the thick of the fight;

  Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas tonight!

  For the Christ-child who comes is the Master of all;

  No palace too great, no cottage too small.

  PHILLIPS BROOKS

  O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM O little town of Bethlehem!

  How still we see thee lie;

  Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

  The silent stars go by;

  Yet in thy dark streets shineth

  The everlasting light;

  The hopes and fears of all the years

  Are met in thee to-night.

  For Christ is born of Mary,

  And gathered all above,

  While mortals sleep, the angels keep

  Their watch of wondering love.

  O morning stars, together

  Proclaim the holy birth!

  And praises sing to God the King,

  And peace to men on earth.

  How silently, how silently,

  The wondrous gift is given!

  So God imparts to human hearts

  The blessings of his heaven.

  No ear may hear his coming,

  But in this world of sin,

  Where meek souls will receive him, still

  The dear Christ enters in.

  O holy Child of Bethlehem!

  Descend to us, we pray;

  Cast out our sin and enter in,

  Be born in us to-day.

  We hear the Christmas angels

  The great glad tidings tell;

  O come to us, abide with us,

  Our Lord Emmanuel!

  PHILLIPS BROOKS

  PRAY WITHOUT CEASING Unanswered yet the prayer your lips have pleaded

  In agony of heart these many years?

  Does faith begin to fail, is hope declining,

  And think you all in vain those falling tears?

  Say not the Father has not heard your prayer;

  You shall have your desire, sometime, somewhere.

  Unanswered yet? tho’ when you first presented

  This one petition at the Father’s throne,

  It seemed you could not wait the time of asking,

  So anxious was your heart to have it done;

  If years have passed since then, do not despair,

  For God will answer you sometime, somewhere.

  Unanswered yet? But you are not unheeded;

  The promises of God forever stand;

  To Him our days and years alike are equal;

  Have faith in God! It is your Lord’s command.

  Hold on to Jacob’s angel, and your prayer

  Shall bring a blessing down sometime, somewhere.

  Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say unanswered,

  Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done,

  The work began when first your prayer was uttered,

  And God will finish what He has begun.

  Keep incense burning at the shrine of prayer,

  And glory shall descend sometime, somewhere.

  Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered;

  Her feet are firmly planted on the Rock;

  Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

  Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.

  She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,

  And cries, “It shall be done sometime, somewhere.”

  OPHELIA GUYON BROWNING

  THANATOPSIS To him who in the love of Nature holds

  Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

  A various language; for his gayer hours

  She has a voice of gladness, and a smile

  And eloquence of beauty, and she glides

  Into his darker musings, with a mild

  And healing sympathy, that steals away

  Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts

  Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

  Over thy spirit, and sad images

  Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

  And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

  Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;—

  Go forth, under the open sky, and list

  To Nature’s teachings, while from all around—.

  Earth and her waters, and the depths of air—

  Comes a still voice:—

  Yet a few days, and thee

  The all-beholding sun shall see no more

  In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,

  Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,

  Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

  Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim

  Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,

  And, lost each human trace, surrendering up

  Thine individual being, shall thou go

  To mix forever with the elements,

  To be a brother to the insensible rock

  And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain

  Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak

  Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

  Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

  Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish

  Couch more magnificent. Thou shall lie down

  With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings.

  The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good,

  Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,

  All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills

  Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales

  Stretching in pensive quietness between;

  The venerable woods—rivers, that move

  In majesty, and the complaining brooks

  That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,

  Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,—

  Are but the solemn decorations all

  Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,

  The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,

  Are shining on the sad abodes of death

  Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread

  The globe are but a handful to the tribes

  That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings

  Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,

  Or lose thyself in the continuous woods

  Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,

  Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there:

  And millions in those solitudes, since first

  The flight of years began, have laid them down

  In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone.

  So shall thou rest, and what if thou withdraw

  In silence from the living, and no friend

  Take note of thy departure? All that breathe

  Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh

  When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care

  Plod on, and each one as before will chase

  His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave

  Their mirth and their employments, and shall come

  And make their bed with thee. As the long train

  Of ages glides away, the sons of men—

  The youth in life’s fresh spring, and he who goes

  In the full strength of years, matron and maid,

  The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man—

  Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,

  By those, who in their turn shall follow them.

  So live, that when thy summons comes to join

  The innumerab
le caravan, which moves

  To that mysterious realm, where each shall take

  His chamber in the silent halls of death,

  Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

  Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed

  By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave

  Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

  About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

  WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

  TRUTH, CRUSHED TO EARTH Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again—

  The eternal years of God are hers;

  But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,

  And dies among his worshippers.

  WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

  WAITING Serene I fold my arms and wait,

  Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea:

  I rave no more ’gainst time or fate,

  For lo! my own shall come to me.

  I stay my haste, I make delays,

  For what avails this eager pace?

  I stand amid the eternal ways,

  And what is mine shall know my face.

  Asleep, awake, by night or day,

  The friends I seek are seeking me;

  No wind can drive my bark astray,

  Nor change the tide of destiny.

  What matter if I stand alone?

  I wait with joy the coming years

  My heart shall reap where it has sown,

  And garner up its fruit of tears.

  The waters know their own, and draw

  The brook that springs in yonder height;

  So flows the good with equal law

  Unto the soul of pure delight.

  The floweret nodding in the wind

  Is ready plighted to the bee;

  And, maiden, why that look unkind?

  For lo! thy lover seeketh thee.

  The stars come nightly to the sky;

  The tidal wave unto the sea;

  Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high

  Can keep my own away from me.

  And dies among his worshippers.

  JOHN BURROUGHS

  EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE A fire mist and a planet—

  A crystal and a cell,—

  A jellyfish and a saurian,

  And caves where the cave men dwell;

  Then a sense of law and beauty,

  And a face turned from the clod—

  Some call it Evolution,

  And others call it God.

  A haze on the far horizon,

  The infinite, tender sky,

  The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields

  And the wild geese sailing high;

  And all over upland and lowland

  The charm of the goldenrod—

  Some of us call it Autumn,

  And others call it God.

  Like tides on a crescent sea beach,

  When the moon is new and thin,

  Into our hearts high yearnings

  Come welling and surging in—

  Come from the mystic ocean,

  Whose rim no foot has trod—

  Some of us call it Longing,

  And others call it God.

  A picket frozen on duty,

  A mother starved for her brood,

  Socrates drinking the hemlock,

  And Jesus on the rood;

  And millions who, humble and nameless,

  The straight, hard pathway plod—

  Some call it Consecration,

  And others call it God.

  WILLIAM HERBERT CARROUTH

  NEARER HOME One sweetly solemn thought

  Comes to me o’er and o’er;

  Nearer my home today am I

  Then e’er I’ve been before.

  Nearer my Father’s house,

  Where many mansions be;

  Nearer, today, the great white throne,

  Nearer the crystal sea.

  Nearer the bound of life,

  Where burdens are laid down;

  Nearer, to leave the heavy cross

  Nearer to gain the crown.

  But, lying dark between,

  Winding down through the night,

  There rolls the deep and unknown stream

  That leads at last to light.

  E’en now, purchance, my feet

  Are slipping on the brink,

  And I, today, am nearer home,—

  Nearer than now I think.

  Father, perfect my trust!

  Strengthen my power of faith!

  Nor let me stand, at last, alone

  Upon the shore of death.

  PHOEBE CARY

  THERE IS NO UNBELIEF There is no unbelief;

  Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod

  And waits to see it push away the clod—

  He trusts in God.

  There is no unbelief;

  Whoever says beneath the sky,

  “Be patient, heart; light breaketh by and by,”

  Trusts the Most High.

  There is no unbelief;

  Whoever sees ’neath winter’s field of snow,

  The silent harvest of the future grow—

  God’s power must know.

  There is no unbelief;

  Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep,

  Content to lock each sense in slumber deep,

  Knows God wilt keep.

  There is no unbelief;

  Whoever says “tomorrow,” “the unknown,”

  “The future,” trusts that power alone

  He dares disown.

  There is no unbelief;

  The heart that looks on when the eyelids close,

  And dares to live when life has only woes,

  God’s comfort knows.

  There is no unbelief;

  For this by day and night unconsciously

  The heart lives by the faith the lips deny.

  God knoweth why.

  ELIZABETH YORK CASE

  THE ABIDING LOVE It singeth low in every heart,

  We hear it each and all—

  A song of those who answer not,

  However we may call;

  They throng the silence of the breast,

  We see them as of yore—

  The kind, the brave, the sweet,

  Who walk with us no more.

  Tis hard to take the burden up

  When these have laid it down;

  They brightened all the joy of life,

  They softened every frown;

  But, Oh, ’tis good to think of them

  When we are troubled sore!

  Thanks be to God that such have been,

  Although they are no more.

  More homelike seems the vast unknown

  Since they have entered there;

  To follow them were not so hard,

  Wherever they may fare;

  They cannot be where God is not,

  On any sea or shore;

  Whate’er betides, thy love abides,

  Our God, forever more.

  JOHN WHITE CHADWICK

  A PRAYER FOR EVERY DAY Make me too brave to lie or be unkind.

  Make me too understanding, too, to mind

  The little hurts companions give, and friends,

  The careless hurts that no one quite intends.

  Make me too thoughtful to hurt others so.

  Help me to know

  The inmost hearts of those for whom I care,

  Their secret wishes, all the loads they bear,

  That I may add my courage to their own.

  May I make lonely folks feel less alone,

  And happy ones a little happier yet.

  May I forget

  What ought to be forgotten; and recall

  Unfailing, all

  That ought to be recalled, each kindly thing,

  Forgetting what might sting.

  To all upon my way,

  Day after day,

  Let me be joy, be hope! Let my life sing!

  MARY CAROLYN
DAVIES

  SORROW Count each affliction, whether light or grave,

  God’s messenger sent down to thee; do thou

  With courtesy receive him, rise and bow;

  And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave

  Permission first his heavenly feet to lave;

  Then lay before him all thou hast; allow

  No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow,

  Or mar thy hospitality; no wave

  Of mortal tumult to obliterate

  Thy soul’s marmoreal calmness.

  Grief should be

  Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate,

  Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free;

  Strong to consume small troubles; to commend

  Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.

  Let me be joy, be hope! Let my life sing!

  SIR AUBREY DE VERE

  EVENING CONTEMPLATION Softly now the light of day

  Fades upon my sight away;

  Free from care, from labor free,

  Lord, I would commune with Thee.

  Thou, whose all-pervading eye

  Naught escapes, without, within!

  Pardon each infirmity,

  Open fault, and secret sin.

  Soon for me the light of day

  Shall for ever pass away;

  Then, from sin and sorrow free,

  Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.

  Thou who, sinless, yet hast known

  All of man’s infirmity!

  Then, from Thine eternal throne,

  Jesus, look with pitying eye.

  Let me be joy, be hope! Let my life sing!

  GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE

  HYMN Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us

  O’er the world’s tempestuous sea;

  Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,

  For we have no help but thee;

  Yet possessing every blessing,

  If our God our Father be.

  Saviour, breathe forgiveness o’er us,

  All our weakness thou dost know;

  Thou didst tread this earth before us;

  Thou didst feel its keenest woe;

  Lone and dreary, faint and weary,