THE CENTURY OF LIFE
NATURAL QUALITIES
Three things are faithful to their place decreed,—— Its splendour as of blood in the lotus red,
Kind actions, of the noble nature part,
And in bad men a cold and crucl heart.
DEATH, NOT VILENESS
Beticr to a dire verge by foemen borne,
O man, thy perishable body dashed
Upon some ragged beach by Ocean lashed, Hurled on the rocks with bleeding limbs and torn;
Better thy hand on the dire cobra’s tooth Sharp-venomed or to anguish in the fire, Not at the baser bidding of desire
Thy heart’s high virtue lost and natural truth.
MAN’S WILL
Renounce thy vain attempt, presumptuous man, Who think’st and labourest long impossibly
That the great heart for misery falter can: Fruitless thy hope that cruel fall to see.
Dull soul! these are not petty transient hills, Himalay and Mahendra and the rest,
Nor your poor oceans, their fixed course and wills ‘That yield by the last cataclysm oppressed.
Man’s will his shattered world can long survive:
When all has perished, it can dare to live.
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