Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A LAY SERMON, by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY Poet's Biography First Line: Brother, do you love your brother? Last Line: The strong man and the waterfall. | ||||||||
BROTHER, do you love your brother? Brother, are you all you seem? Do you live for more than living? Has your life a law and scheme? Are you prompt to bear its duties, As a brave man may beseem? Brother, shun the mist exhaling From the fen of pride and doubt; Neither seek the house of bondage, Walling straitened souls about -- Bats! who, from their narrow spy-hole, Cannot see a world without. Anchor in no stagnant shallow; Trust the wide and wondrous sea, Where the tides are fresh for ever, And the mighty currents free: There, perchance, O young Columbus! Your New World of truth may be. Favour will not make deserving -- Can the sunshine brighten clay? -- Slowly must it grow to blossom, Fed by labour and delay; And the fairest bud of promise Bears the taint of quick decay. You must strive for better guerdons -- Strive to be the thing you'd seem; Be the thing that God hath made you, Channel for no borrowed stream; He hath lent you mind and conscience -- See you travel in their beam! See you scale life's misty highlands By this light of living truth! And, with bosom braced for labour, Breast them in your manly youth; So, when age and care have found you, Shall your downward path be smooth. Fear not, on that rugged highway, Life may want its lawful zest; Sunny glens are in the mountain, Where the weary feet may rest, Cooled in streams that gush for ever From a loving mother's breast. 'Simple heart and simple pleasures,' So they write life's golden rule. Honour won by supple baseness, State that crowns a cankered fool, Gleam as gleam the gold and purple On a hot and rancid pool. Wear no show of wit or science, But the gems you've won and weighed; Thefts, like ivy on a ruin, Make the rifts they seem to shade: Are you not a thief and beggar In the rarest spoils arrayed? Shadows deck a sunny landscape, Making brighter all the bright; So, my brother! care and danger On a loving nature light, Bringing all its latent beauties Out upon the common sight. Love the things that God created, Make your brother's need your care; Scorn and hate repel God's blessings, But where love's is, they are there; As the moonbeams light the waters, Leaving rock and sand-bank bare. Thus, my brother, grow and flourish, Fearing none and loving all; For the true man needs no patron -- He shall climb, and never crawl; Two things fashion their own channel -- The strong man and the waterfall. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FAG AN BEALAGH by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY INIS-EOGHAIN [OR, INISHOWEN] by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY THE OLD STOIC by EMILY JANE BRONTE TO DIANEME (1) by ROBERT HERRICK BALLAD OF HECTOR IN HADES by EDWIN MUIR LUCY (1) by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AN INVITATION TO A DRINKFEST by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS VERS LIBRE by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS |
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