A Poem. That Providence which feeds the sparrow protects the lawyer still. Man is litigious to the marrow in spite of priest and pill; And though toward the goal of grace the world is drifting fast, We look for quarrelling ahead as well as in the past. Some men will still conspire to grab the things which others own From the fugitive umbrella to the complex telephone. Before another decade 's past some mortal may be crying, "I first invented the machine by which John Smith is flying." Though homicide is out of date on peaceful Beacon Hill, Electric horse-cars militate to work the murderer's will, And specious papers on our walls abundantly exhale The deadly poison which would make a judge and jury pale. O brethren of the legal faith, the world is growing old, But many a poem will still be writ and many a tale be told, And many issues still will rise like mushrooms from their bed To add a little butter to the lawyer's daily bread. And so in philosophic vein I say, as I began, Although the man of law loves peace and is a peaceful man, Let dogs delight to bark and bite, and doctors disagree; It were not well that all mankind should live in unity. If with consummate peacefulness the Christian world were blest, Some occupations would be gone, and ours among the rest. O mighty mistress of the Law, to thee our knees we bow! We are the high-priests of thy shrine, our adoration thou! O moulder of the centuries who holds the world in fee, We, as the high-priests of thy shrine, bring largess unto thee I We pledge the ardent hopes of youth, the faith of Nestors gray, The strength of manhood in the stress and glory of the fray. Thou art the stern embodiment of gravest human thought,— The essence not of what men would, but that of what men ought. Thine attributes are still the same; but as we grow in grace, We read new meanings in the lines of thy majestic face, A subtler justice in thine eyes than that our fathers saw. Oh, may we ever strive and pray to know thee better, Law!
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