Poetry Archives

When I was young, my heart elate
  With ardent notions warm,
I thirsted to inaugurate
  A spirit of reform;
The universe was all awry,
  Philosophy despite,
And mundane things disjointed I
  Was bound to set aright.

My mind conceived a million plans,
  For Hope was brave and strong,
But dared not with unaided hands
  Combat a giant wrong;
So with caress I sought to coax
  Those who had humored me
In infancy—the dear old folks—
  And gain their sympathy.

But quarreling with extant laws
  They would have deemed a shame
Who clung to error, just because
  Their fathers did the same.
I sought in Pleasure’s gilded halls,
  Where grace and beauty stirred
At revelry’s impetuous calls,
  To make my projects heard.

Then turned to stately palaces
  Of luxury and ease,
Where wealth’s absorbing object was
  The master’s whim to please;
And spoke of evils unredressed,
  Of danger yet to be—
They only answered, like the rest:
  “But what is that to me?”

And even pious devotees
  Whom sacred walls immure
Condemned me (as by feeble praise)—
  What more could I endure?
Down by the stream, so pure and clear
  That sunbeams paused to drink,
In loneliness and grief sincere
  I pressed its grassy brink.

Thick darkness seemed to veil the day;
  Beyond a realm of tears
Utopia’s land of promise lay;
  And not till later years
I learned this lesson—that to win
  Results from labor sure,
“Reformers” always must begin
  Among the lowly poor.

For they whose lot privation is
  And whose delights are few,
Whose aggregate of miseries
  Is want of something new,
The measure of whose happiness
  Is but an empty cup,
For every novelty will press
  Alert to fill it up.