Читать книгу Violets and Other Tales - Alice Dunbar Nelson - Страница 6

Table of Contents

FIRST.

How few of us

In all the world's great, ceaseless struggling strife,

Go to our work with gladsome, buoyant step,

And love it for its sake, whate'er it be.

Because it is a labor, or, mayhap,

Some sweet, peculiar art of God's own gift;

And not the promise of the world's slow smile

of recognition, or of mammon's gilded grasp.

Alas, how few, in inspiration's dazzling flash,

Or spiritual sense of world's beyond the dome

Of circling blue around this weary earth,

Can bask, and know the God-given grace

Of genius' fire that flows and permeates

The virgin mind alone; the soul in which

The love of earth hath tainted not.

The love of art and art alone.

SECOND.

"Who dares stand forth?" the monarch cried,

"Amid the throng, and dare to give

Their aid, and bid this wretch to live?

I pledge my faith and crown beside,

A woeful plight, a sorry sight,

This outcast from all God-given grace.

What, ho! in all, no friendly face,

No helping hand to stay his plight?

St. Peter's name be pledged for aye,

The man's accursed, that is true;

But ho, he suffers. None of you

Will mercy show, or pity sigh?"

Strong men drew back, and lordly train

Did slowly file from monarch's look,

Whose lips curled scorn. But from a nook

A voice cried out, "Though he has slain

That which I loved the best on earth,

Yet will I tend him till he dies,

I can be brave." A woman's eyes

Gazed fearlessly into his own.

THIRD.

When all the world has grown full cold to thee,

And man--proud pygmy--shrugs all scornfully,

And bitter, blinding tears flow gushing forth,

Because of thine own sorrows and poor plight,

Then turn ye swift to nature's page,

And read there passions, immeasurably far

Greater than thine own in all their littleness.

For nature has her sorrows and her joys,

As all the piled-up mountains and low vales

Will silently attest--and hang thy head

In dire confusion, for having dared

To moan at thine own miseries

When God and nature suffer silently.