An Incident in a Railroad Car

He spoke of Burns: men rude and roughPressed round to hear the praise of oneWhose 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 weanedFrom 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 sawSome presence of the bard.

It was a sight for sin and wrongAnd slavish tyranny to see,A sight to make our faith more pure and strongIn high humanity.

I thought, these men will carry hencePromptings their former life above,And something of a finer reverenceFor 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 seedsOf a more true and open life,Which burst, unlooked-for, into high-souled deeds,With wayside beauty rife.

We find within these souls of oursSome wild germs of a higher birth,Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowersWhose fragrance fills the earth.

Within the hearts of all men lieThese promises of wider bliss,Which blossom into hopes that cannot die,In sunny hours like this.

All that hath been majesticalIn 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 loreOf classic Greece and Rome.

O, mighty brother-soul of man,Where'er thou art, in low or high,Thy skiey arches with exulting spanO'er-roof infinity!

All thoughts that mould the age beginDeep down within the primitive soul,And from the many slowly upward winTo one who grasps the whole:

In his wide brain the feeling deepThat struggled on the many's tongueSwells to a tide of thought, whose surges leapO'er the weak thrones of wrong.

All thought begins in feeling,--wideIn the great mass its base is hid,And, narrowing up to thought, stands glorified,A moveless pyramid.

Nor is he far astray who deemsThat every hope, which rises and grows broadIn the world's heart, by ordered impulse streamsFrom the great heart of God.

God wills, man hopes: in common soulsHope is but vague and undefined,Till from the poet's tongue the message rollsA blessing to his kind.

Never did Poesy appearSo full of heaven to me, as whenI saw how it would pierce through pride and fearTo the lives of coarsest men.

It may be glorious to writeThoughts that shall glad the two or threeHigh souls, like those far stars that come in sightOnce in a century;--

But better far it is to speakOne simple word, which now and thenShall waken their free nature in the weakAnd 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 shineIn 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 thoseWho live and speak for aye.