Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BUILDER AND HIS TOOLS, by SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE First Line: Nations arise and fall Last Line: The question and the answer might be heard. Subject(s): Judgments; Law & Lawyers; Missionaries & Missions; Attorneys | ||||||||
I NATIONS arise and fall: One law decides it all, To serve the Builder's purpose if they can. He takes them up for tools, Or lays them down, as rules The moment's need in furtherance of His plan. With varied aims and strife And thousand-summered life, Each one at last achieves some separate goal, Which, when achieved, afar Looks simple as a star And fitted to its place within the whole. II The Builder raised His hand, And there was Greece, as planned, Launching her ships to peer through all the seas: Heroic deeds along With Homer's noble song; Temples, and oracles, and Socrates. For what, you ask, designed? To wake the slumbering mind And set a hunger in the soul, forsooth: To all men's hopes and fears, Across the waste of years, Greece voiced the timeless question, "What is truth?" III Again the Builder's sign, And David's royal line Bare down the wrathful age its tiny spark, Close-shielding it, as one, Where the wild breezes run, Might shield an only candle in the dark: Till, grown to full desire As heaven's great altar-fire, The spark shone through the world in gentle ruth: This people for all time The answer gave sublime, In giving Him who said, "I am the truth." IV Hebrew and Greek were done; Builder and work went on: Rome, lifted on her hills, began to trace The wrong of lawless might, The lawful might of right, In laws she laid on all the human race. Unconscious instrument, Toward such a mission bent, Rome called the world to order by her word, That then and evermore, All lands and waters o'er, The question and the answer might be heard. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JAKE MANN by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SIX POETS IN SEATCH OF A LAWYER by DONALD HALL ANY AND ALL by LAWRENCE JOSEPH DOMESDAY BOOK: JANE FISHER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS DOMESDAY BOOK: THE GOVERNOR by EDGAR LEE MASTERS LAW LIKE LOVE by WYSTAN HUGH AUDEN THE LAWYER'S INVOCATION TO SPRING by HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL THE LAWYER'S WAYS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR A LADY'S PORTRAIT by SAMUEL VALENTINE COLE |
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