To toil all day and lie worn-out at night;To rise for all the years to slave and sleep,And breed new broods to do no other thingIn toiling, bearing, breeding -- life is thisTo myriad men, too base for man or brute.
To serve for common duty, while the brainIs hot with high desire to be distinct;To fill the sand-grain place among the stonesThat build the social wall in million sameness,Is life by leave, and death by insignificance.
To live the morbid years, with dripping bloodOf sacrificial labor for a Thought;To take the dearest hope and lay it downBeneath the crushing wheels for love of Freedom;To bear the sordid jeers of cant and trade,And go on hewing for a far ideal, --This were a life worth giving to a cause,If cause be found so worth a martyr life.
But highest life of man, nor work nor sacrifice,But utter seeing of the things that be!To pass amid the hurrying crowds, and watchThe hungry race for things of vulgar use;To mark the growth of baser lines in men;To note the bending to a servile rule;To know the natural discord called diseaseThat rots like rust the blood and souls of men;To test the wisdoms and philosophies by touchOf that which is immutable, being clear,The beam God opens to the poet's brain;To see with eyes of pity laboring soulsStrive upward to the Freedom and the Truth,And still be backward dragged by fear and ignorance;To see the beauty of the world, and hearThe rising harmony of growth, whose shadeOf undertone is harmonized decay;To know that love is life -- that blood is oneAnd rushes to the union -- that the heartIs like a cup athirst for wine of love;Who sees and feels this meaning utterly,The wrong of law, the right of man, the natural truth.Partaking not of selfish aims, withholding notThe word that strengthens and the hand that helps:Who waits and sympathizes with the pettiest life,And loves all things, and reaches up to GodWith thanks and blessing -- He alone is living.
