Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
III. Faith: Hope: Love: ServiceWhat I Live For
George Linnæus Banks (18211881)I
Whose hearts are kind and true,
For heaven that smiles above me,
And waits my spirit, too;
For all the ties that bind me,
For all the tasks assigned me,
And bright hopes left behind me,
And good that I can do.
Who’ve suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And follow in their wake;
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The noble of all ages,
Whose deeds crown history’s pages,
And Time’s great volume make.
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union
’Twixt Nature’s heart and mine;
To profit by affliction,
Reap truths from fields of fiction,
And, wiser from conviction,
Fulfil each grand design.
By gifted minds foretold,
When men shall rule by reason,
And not alone by gold;
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted
As Eden was of old.
Whose hearts are kind and true,
For heaven that smiles above me,
And waits my spirit too;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.