Watch Yourself Go By

JUST STAND ASIDE and watch yourself go by;
Think of yourself as "he" instead of "I".
Note, closely as in other men you note,
The bag-kneed trousers and the seedy coat.
Pick flaws; find fault; forget the man is you,
And strive to make your estimate ring true.
Confront yourself and look you in the eye-
Just stand aside and watch yourself go by.

Interpret all your motives just as though
You looked on one whose aims you did not know.
Let undisguised contempt surge through you when
You see the shirk, O commonest of men!
Despise your cowardice; condemn whate'er
You note of falseness in you anywhere.
Defend not one defect that shames your eye-
Just stand aside and watch yourself go by.

And then, with eyes unveiled to what you loathe,
To sings that with sweet charity you'd clothe,
Back to your self-walled tenement you'll go
With tolerance for all who dwell below.
The faults of others then will dwarf and shrink,
Love's chain grow stronger by one mighty link,
When you, with "he" as substitute for "I,"
Have stood aside and watched yourself go by.

--Stickland Gillilan

The Town Of Nogood

MY FRIEND, have you heard of the town of Nogood,
On the banks of River Slow,
Where blooms the Waitawhile flower fair,
Where the Sometimeorother scents the air,
And the soft Goeasies grow?

It lies in the Valley of Whatstheuse,
In the Province of Letterslide,
That Tiredfeeling is native there,
It's the home of the reckless Idontcare,
Where the Giveitups abide.

It stands at the bottom of Lazyhill,
And is easy to reach, I declare;
You've only to fold up your hand and glide
Down the slope of Weakwill's toboggan slide
To be landed quickly there.

The town is as old as the human race
And it grows with the flight of years.
It is wrapped in the fog of idlers' dreams,
Its streets are paved with discardded schemes,
And sprinkled with useless tears.

The Collegebred fool and the Richman's heir
Are plentiful there, no doubt.
The rest of its crowd are a motley crew,
With every class except one in view-
The Foolkiller is barred out.

The town of Nogood is all hedged about
By the mountains of Despair.
No sentinel stands of its gloomy walls,
No trumpet to battle and triumph calls,
For cowards alone are there.

My friend, from the dead-alive town Nogood
If you would keep far away,
Just follow your duty through good and ill,
Take this for you motto, "I can, I will,"
And live up to it each day.

--W. E. Penny

Today

To BE alive in such an age!
With every year a lightning page
Turned in the world's great wonder book
Whereon the leaning nations look.
When men speak strong brotherhood,
For peace and universal good,
When miracles are everywhere,
And every ince of common air
Throbs a tremendou prophecy
Of greater marvels yet to be.
    O thrilling age,
    O willing age!
When steel and stone and rail and rod
Become the avenus of God-
A trump to shout His thunder through
To crown the work that man may do.

To be alive in such an age!
When man, impatient of his cage,
Thrills to the soul's immortal rage
For conquest-reaches goal on goal,
Travels the earth from pole to pole,
Garners the tempests and the tides
And on a Dream Triumphant rides.
When, hid within the lump of clay,
A light more terrible than day
Proclaims the presence of that Force
Which hurls the planets on their course.
    O age with wings
    O age with flings
A challenge to the very sky,
Where endless realms of conquest lie!
When, earth on tiptoe, strives to hear
The message of a sister sphere,
Yearning to reach the cosmic wires
That flash Infinity's desires.

To be alive in such an age!
That blunders forth its discontent
With futile creed and sacrament,
Yet craves to utter God's intent,
Seeing beneath the world's unrest
Creation's hugs, untiring quest,
And through Tradition's broken crust
The flame of Truth's triumphant thrust;
Below the seething thought of man
The push of a stupendous Plan.
    O age of strife!
    O age of life!
When Progress rides her chariots high,
And on the borders of the sky
The signals of the century
Proclaims the things that are to be-
The rise of woman to her place,
The coming of a nobler race.
To be alive in such ang age-
    To live in it,
    To give to it!
Rise, soul, from thy despairing knees.
What if thy lips have drunk the lees?
Fling forth thy sorrows to the wind
And link thy hope with humankind-
The passion of a larger claim
Will put thy puny grief to shame.
Breathe the world thought, do the world deed,
Think hugely of thy brother's need.
And what thy woe, and what thy weal?
Look to the work the times reveal!
Give thanks with all thy flaming heart-
Crave but to have in it a part.
Give thanks and clasp thy heritage-
To be alive in such an age!

--Angela Morgan