Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FOR CONCORD, by ANNIE MATHESON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FOR CONCORD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Though love redeem us, do we stake
Last Line: His will be done!
Subject(s): Love; Wisdom


THOUGH Love redeem us, do we stake
Our souls upon the mighty bond,
As brothers, serve for others' sake,
Till love in hatred's self awake,
And love, on this side death, respond
To love beyond?

Is life, this little life, so long,
That we its wasting hours should spend
In cherishing eternal wrong,
Or beckoning passions that will throng
Our reckless path until the end,
To smite and rend?

If, clutching pleasure, shirking pain,
We forfeit manhood in the act,
What profit, though the world we gain
And lose ourselves; too late, in vain,
Find love is gone, and we enact
The devil's pact?—

From infinite hope and fellowship
Have rung our own dividing knell,
And deep in isolation dip,
Until the heaven, whose key we grip,
The selfish heaven we guard so well,
Is lonely hell?—

Yet once we felt the life that fills
The boundless universe; and, lo,
It sweeps through myriad stars, and thrills
The dewy flowers, the dreaming hills
And all the souls that to and fro
Still come and go!

Through sorrow, and loss, and noble rage,
The rapture of the world is wrought,
Of every country, every age,
The one immortal heritage,
Above all joy, beyond all thought,
With wisdom fraught,—

The deepening concord, blissful, tense,
When sympathies divinely mate,
Or differing notes in long suspense,
Uniting, meet their recompense,
And, storming music's inmost gate,
Fulfil their fate!

Lost! Lost! Then are we lost indeed
If this, our life, we cast away
In snatching all the power we need
To choke our own imperious greed,
Till we, self-murdered day by day,
Lie deep in clay!

The Love once slain, divinely crowned,
Not as a Servant but a Son,
Feels every wound when, trampled, bound,
We suffer and no help is found.
He died that all men might be one:
His will be done!





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