Poem by Martha Dickinson Bianchi

The Worlds

I SAW an idler on a summer day
Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;
And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,
And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams,
His rainbow rising from his radiant task,
To throw its magic prism beams
O'er Fancy's changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world
Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,
His skyward pinions ever closer furled
Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be
Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;
I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea
Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child—
I saw a saint among his fellow men—
Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled
And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: "The stars are no less neighborly
In their ethereal remoteness swung,
Than these near human orbits wherein we
Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

"Love seek through all—less there be one
Least soul unlit within the night—
And over all, the selfsame sun
Give each creation light!"

1. A Priest’s Prayer
2. Reality
3. Unanswered
4. Heaven

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