THE EXPLORER

Yes, your 'Never-never country'-yes, your 'edge of cultivation'

And 'no sense in going farther'-till I crossed the range to see.

God forgive me! No, I didn't. It's God's present to our nation.

Anybody might have found it but-His Whisper came to Me!

Ο

THE WAGE-SLAVES

(1902)

H glorious are the guarded heights
Where guardian souls abide-
Self-exiled from our gross delights-
Above, beyond, outside:

An ampler arc their spirit swings

Commands a juster view

We have their word for all these things,
Nor doubt their words are true.

Yet we the bondslaves of our day,
Whom dirt and danger press-
Co-heirs of insolence, delay,

And leagued unfaithfulness—
Such is our need must seek indeed
And, having found, engage

The men who merely do the work
For which they draw the wage.

From forge and farm and mine and bench,
Deck, altar, outpost lone-

Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench,
Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne-

THE WAGE-SLAVES

Creation's cry goes up on high
From age to cheated age:

'Send us the men who do the work
For which they draw the wage.'

Words cannot help nor wit achieve,
Nor e'en the all-gifted fool,
Too weak to enter, bide, or leave
The lists he cannot rule.

Beneath the sun we count on none
Our evil to assuage,

Except the men that do the work
For which they draw the wage.

When through the Gates of Stress and Strain Comes forth the vast Event

The simple, sheer, sufficing, sane

Result of labour spent

They that have wrought the end unthought

Be neither saint nor sage,

But merely men who did the work
For which they drew the wage.

Wherefore to these the Fates shall bend (And all old idle things-)

Wherefore on these shall Power attend

Beyond the grasp of kings.

Each in his place, by right, not grace,
Shall rule his heritage-

The men who simply do the work

For which they draw the wage.

Not such as scorn the loitering street,
Or waste to earn its praise,
Their noontide's unreturning heat
About their morning ways:

But such as dower each mortgaged hour
Alike with clean courage-

Even the men who do the work

For which they draw the wage—

Men like to Gods that do the work
For which they draw the wage-
Begin continue-close the work
For which they draw the wage!

THE BURIAL

(1902)

C. J. Rhodes, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902

W

HEN that great Kings return to clay,
Or Emperors in their pride,

Grief of a day

shall fill a day,

Because its creature died.

But we we reckon not with those

Whom the mere Fates ordain,
This Power that wrought on us and goes
Back to the Power again.

Dreamer devout, by vision led

Beyond our guess or reach,

The travail of his spirit bred
Cities in place of speech.

So huge the all-mastering thought that drove—
So brief the term allowed-
Nations, not words, he linked to prove

His faith before the crowd.

It is his will that he look forth
Across the world he won-

The granite of the ancient North-
Great spaces washed with sun.