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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Equality

Arthur Weir

Mad fools! To think that men can be
  Made equal all, when God
Made one well nigh divinity
  And one a soulless clod.

Nowhere in Nature can we find
  Things equal, save in death,
One man must rule with thoughtful mind,
  One serve with panting breath.

The maples spread their foliage green
  To shade the grass below,
Hills rise the lowly vales between
  Or streams would never flow.

A million creatures find a home
  Within a droplet’s sphere,
And giants through the woodlands roam
  While quakes the land in fear.

A tiny fall in music breaks
  Against the mountain’s base,
While roars an avalanche and shakes
  The whole world in its race.

One must be weak and one be strong,
  One huge, another small,
To help this teeming world along,
  And make a home for all.

Equality is death, not life,
  In Nature and with man,
And progress is but upward strife
  With some one in the van.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Fleurs De Lys and Other Poems | 1887
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