Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE NAMELESS SAINTS by EDWARD EVERETT HALE

First Line: WHAT WAS HIS NAME? I DO NOT KNOW HIS NAME
Last Line: COUNT ME AMONG ALL FAITHFUL SOULS.
Subject(s): SAINTS;
What was his name? I do not know his name.
I only know he heard God's voice and came,
Brought all he had across the sea
To live and work for God and me;
Felled the ungracious oak;
Dragged from the soil
With horrid toil
The thrice-gnarled roots and stubborn rock;
With plenty piled the haggard mountain-side;
And at the end, without memorial, died.
No blaring trumpets sounded out his fame,
He lived—he died—I do not know his name.

No form of bronze and no memorial stones
Show me the place where lie his mouldering bones.
Only a cheerful city stands
Builded by his hardened hands.
Only ten thousand homes
Where every day
The cheerful play
Of love and hope and courage comes.
These are his monuments, and these alone,
There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone.

And I?
Is there some desert or some pathless sea
Where Thou, good God of angels, wilt send me?
Some oak for me to rend; some sod,
Some rock for me to break,
Some handful of His corn to take
And scatter far afield
Till it, in turn, shall yield
Its hundredfold
Of grains of gold
To feed the waiting children of my God?
Show me the desert, Father, or the sea.
Is it Thine enterprise? Great God, send me.
And though this body lie where ocean rolls,
Count me among all Faithful Souls.



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