A NATION'S TEST.
139
Sun-kissed and fruitful, every clod is breeding
A petty life, too small to reach the eye:
So must it be, with no Man thinking, leading,
The generations creep their course and die.
Hapless the lands, and doomed amid the races.
That give no answer to this royal test;
Their toiling tribes will droop ignoble faces,
Till earth in pity takes them back to rest.
A vast monotony may not be evil.
But God's light tells us it cannot be good;
Valley and hill have beauty—but the level
Must bear a shadeless and a stagnant brood.
II.
I bring the touchstone, Motherland, to thee.
And test thee trembling, fearing thou shouldst fail;
If fruitless, sonless, thou wert proved to be.
Ah, what would love and memory avail?
