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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A LAY SERMON, by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY Poet's Biography First Line: Brother, do you love your brother? Last Line: The strong man and the waterfall. | |||
BROTHER, do you love your brother? Brother, are you all you seem? Do you live for more than living? Has your life a law and scheme? Are you prompt to bear its duties, As a brave man may beseem? Brother, shun the mist exhaling From the fen of pride and doubt; Neither seek the house of bondage, Walling straitened souls about -- Bats! who, from their narrow spy-hole, Cannot see a world without. Anchor in no stagnant shallow; Trust the wide and wondrous sea, Where the tides are fresh for ever, And the mighty currents free: There, perchance, O young Columbus! Your New World of truth may be. Favour will not make deserving -- Can the sunshine brighten clay? -- Slowly must it grow to blossom, Fed by labour and delay; And the fairest bud of promise Bears the taint of quick decay. You must strive for better guerdons -- Strive to be the thing you'd seem; Be the thing that God hath made you, Channel for no borrowed stream; He hath lent you mind and conscience -- See you travel in their beam! See you scale life's misty highlands By this light of living truth! And, with bosom braced for labour, Breast them in your manly youth; So, when age and care have found you, Shall your downward path be smooth. Fear not, on that rugged highway, Life may want its lawful zest; Sunny glens are in the mountain, Where the weary feet may rest, Cooled in streams that gush for ever From a loving mother's breast. 'Simple heart and simple pleasures,' So they write life's golden rule. Honour won by supple baseness, State that crowns a cankered fool, Gleam as gleam the gold and purple On a hot and rancid pool. Wear no show of wit or science, But the gems you've won and weighed; Thefts, like ivy on a ruin, Make the rifts they seem to shade: Are you not a thief and beggar In the rarest spoils arrayed? Shadows deck a sunny landscape, Making brighter all the bright; So, my brother! care and danger On a loving nature light, Bringing all its latent beauties Out upon the common sight. Love the things that God created, Make your brother's need your care; Scorn and hate repel God's blessings, But where love's is, they are there; As the moonbeams light the waters, Leaving rock and sand-bank bare. Thus, my brother, grow and flourish, Fearing none and loving all; For the true man needs no patron -- He shall climb, and never crawl; Two things fashion their own channel -- The strong man and the waterfall. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FAG AN BEALAGH by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY INIS-EOGHAIN [OR, INISHOWEN] by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY FOR WALT WHITMAN by DAVID IGNATOW THE FIRESIDE by NATHANIEL COTTON SONNET WRITTEN IN DISGUST OF VULGAR SUPERSTITION by JOHN KEATS OEDIPUS AT COLONUS: OLD AGE by SOPHOCLES TO MY FIANCEE by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS SARGENT'S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT THE PLAYERS by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE BLIND ASTRONOMER by THOMAS ASA |
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