Endeavour

The way is steep, and still the call is On,--
I would not know the weary life and stale
Nor seek the thing that men wait long upon—
A breathing rest when old desires fail.

There lies no vision splendid on the plains;
Living’s not life beside the placid streams,
For stress and travail and the pride of pain
Are warp and woven woof in all my dream:

Yet, if the day should darken, or the storm
Beat on my brow, or shriek across the night,
And with God’s pregnant enmity inform
His sequent messengers of dark and light:

I trust I shall not falter in the race,
Nor with the trothless and the recreant fly,
But fling my weak defiance in His face.
Or bear His swift contempt, and laugh, and die!

Yet this I know, deep in the heart of me,
That He Who bore His cross along our ways
Gave once the truth that still shall make men free
And walks as Brother Man through all our days.