Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A LAY SERMON, by CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A LAY SERMON, by                     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...



Home: PoetryExplorer.net