Say!  Let’s not take it so sorely to heart! 
  Hates may be friendships just drifted apart,
  Failure be genius not quite understood,
  Say!  Let’s get closer to somebody’s side,
  See what his dreams are and learn how he tried,
  See if our scoldings won’t give way to praise
  One of these days.

  Say!  Let’s not wither!  Let’s branch out and rise
  Out of the byways and nearer the skies. 
  Let’s spread some shade that’s refreshing and deep
  Where some tired traveler may lie down and sleep. 
  Say!  Let’s not tarry!  Let’s do it right now;
  So much to do if we just find out how! 
  We may not be here to help folks or praise
  One of these days.

James W. Foley.

From “The Voices of Song.”

[Illustration:  JAMES WILLIAM FOLEY]

GOD

We often think people shallow, think them incapable of anything serious or profound, because their work is humdrum and their speech trivial.  Such a judgment is unfair, since that part of our own life which shows itself to others is superficial likewise, though we are conscious that within us is much that it does not reveal.

  I think about God. 
    Yet I talk of small matters. 
  Now isn’t it odd
    How my idle tongue chatters! 
  Of quarrelsome neighbors,
    Fine weather and rain,
  Indifferent labors,
    Indifferent pain,
  Some trivial style
    Fashion shifts with a nod. 
  And yet all the while
    I am thinking of God.

Gamaliel Bradford.

From “Shadow Verses.”

MY TRIUMPH

The poet, looking back upon the hopes he has cherished, perceives that he has fallen far short of achieving them.  The songs he has sung are less sweet than those he has dreamed of singing; the wishes he has wrought into facts are less noble than those that are yet unfulfilled.  But he looks forward to the time when all that he desires for humankind shall yet come to pass.  The praise will not be his; it will belong to others.  Still, he does not envy those who are destined to succeed where he failed.  Rather does he rejoice that through them his hopes for the race will be realized.  And he is happy that by longing for just such a triumph he shares in it—­he makes it his triumph.

  Let the thick curtain fall;
  I better know than all
  How little I have gained,
  How vast the unattained.

  Not by the page word-painted
  Let life be banned or sainted: 
  Deeper than written scroll
  The colors of the soul.

  Sweeter than any sung
  My songs that found no tongue
  Nobler than any fact
  My wish that failed to act.

  Others shall sing the song,
  Others shall right the wrong,—­
  Finish what I begin,
  And all I fail of win.