Wisdom’s Counsel

Wisdom’s Counsel

I

But Wisdom wearying said,

‘I know a nobler way.

Let Fate with Sorrow wed

And give the Deep his day;

But turn thine eyes and see

With some more love sincere

The prisoners that with thee

Are also dungeon’d here—

The pale flower in the chink,

The spider at the grate,

The bird that comes to drink

His tollage from thy plate.’

Grief, sitting sad’ning still

With cold eyes inward cast,

Looks round the empty will

And dreary chambers vast

Of thought. She cannot sit;

She loathes her selfish tears;

She looks once more without,

And lo! worse grief appears.

Her tears bechidden freeze;

She watches the world’s need,

And deeper sorrow sees,

And that that weeps indeed.

There is no misery

Attired in mourning wear,

Worse misery may not see,

And that that goeth bare.

We have no heavy cross

To some one’s is not small;

We weep no heavy loss

But some one weeps his all;

And not the grief unseen,

And not the aching mind,

Cries like the sorrow seen

And shivering in the wind.

II

Half stun’d I look around

And see a land of death—

Dead bones that walk the ground

And dead bones underneath;

A race of wretches caught

Between the palms of Need

And rub’d to utter naught,

The chaff of human seed;

And all like stricken leaves,

Despondent multitudes

The wind of winter drives

About the broken woods.

The toiler tills the field,

But at his bosom coil’d

The blood-leach makes him yield

The pence for which he toil’d,

And grows and drops off fat

From these poor breathless ones,

Who know not this or that

But work themselves to bones;

And this one fever’d flags,

And that one hopeless tries,

Or uncomplaining drags

A giant leg, and dies.