You have given me a home and a place
      Where in safety my babies may play;
    Health blooms on each bright dimpled face
      And laughter is theirs every day. 
    You have guarded from danger the shrine
      Where I worship when toiling is through,
    But, oh wonderful country of mine,
      How little have I done for you!

    I have taken your gifts without thought,
      I have reveled in joys that you gave,
    That I see now with blood had been bought,
      The blood of your earlier braves. 
    I have lived without making one sign
      That the source of my riches I knew,
    Now, oh wonderful country of mine,
      I’m here to do something for you!

         A Wish

God grant my children may
Not think in terms of gold
When I have passed away
And my poor form is cold. 
When I no more shall be,
If of me they would brag,
I’d have them speak of me
As one who loved the Flag.

    God grant my children may
      Not speak of me as one
    Who trod a selfish way,
      When I am dead and gone. 
    When they recall my name
      I’d have them tell that I
    Held dear my Country’s fame
      And kept her standards high.

    Not for the things I gave
      Would I be counted kind;
    When I am in my grave,
      If they my worth would find,
    I’d have them read it there
      In red and white and blue
    And stars of radiance rare! 
      And say that I was true.

         Living

If through the years we’re not to do
Much finer deeds than we have done;
If we must merely wander through
Time’s garden, idling in the sun;
If there is nothing big ahead,
Why do we fear to join the dead?

Unless to-morrow means that we
Shall do some needed service here;
That tasks are waiting you and me
That will be lost, save we appear;
Then why this dreadful thought of sorrow
That we may never see to-morrow?

    If all our finest deeds are done,
      And all our splendor’s in the past;
    If there’s no battle to be won,
      What matter if to-day’s our last? 
    Is life so sweet that we would live
    Though nothing back to life we give?

Not to have lived through seventy years
Is greatness.  Fitter to be sung
In poet’s praises and in cheers
Is he who dies in action, young;
Who ventures all for one great deed
And gives his life to serve life’s need.

         Life’s Slacker

The saddest sort of death to die
Would be to quit the game called life
And know, beneath the gentle sky,
You’d lived a slacker in the strife. 
That nothing men on earth would find
To mark the spot that you had filled;
That you must go and leave behind
No patch of soil your hands had tilled.