It is coming! it is coming! The day is just a-dawning
When man shall be to fellow-man a helper and a brother;
When the mansion, with its gilded hall, its tower and arch and awning,
Shall be to hovel desolate a kind and foster-mother.
When the men who work for wages shall not toil from morn till even,
With no vision of the sunlight, nor flowers, nor birds a-singing;
When the men who hire the workers, blest with all the gifts of heaven,
Shall the golden rule remember, its glad millennium bringing.
The time is coming when the man who cares not for another
Shall be accounted as a stain upon a fair creation;
Who lives to fill his coffers full, his better self to smother,
As blight and mildew on the fame and glory of a nation.
The hours are growing shorter for the millions who are toiling,
And the homes are growing better for the millions yet to be;
And the poor shall learn the lesson, how that waste and sin are
spoiling
The fairest and the finest of a grand humanity.
It is coming! it is coming! and men's thoughts are growing deeper;
They are giving of their millions as they never gave before;
They are learning the new gospel, man must be his brother's keeper,
And right, not might, shall triumph, and the selfish rule no more.
--Sarah Knowles Bolton.
To a darning-needle once exclaimed the kitchen sieve,
"You've a hole right through your body, and I wonder how you live."
But the needle (who was sharp) replied, "I too have wondered
That you notice my _one_ hole, when in you there are a hundred!"
--Saadi, tr. by James Freeman Clarke.