Our Profession and Other Poems
J >> Jared Barhite >> Our Profession and Other Poems[Illustration: Jared Barhite]
OUR PROFESSION
AND
OTHER POEMS.
BY
JARED BARHITE,
Principal of Third Ward Grammar School,
Long Island City, N. Y.
PUBLISHED BY
WILLIAM E. BARHITE,
270 Freeman Avenue, Long Island City, N. Y.
1895.
COPYRIGHT, 1895.
PRESS OF
WEISEL, MEIER & WITTE,
109 NASSAU ST., N. Y.
PREFACE.
During the past quarter of a century, it has been a pleasant pastime for
me to obey the dictates of my feelings and inscribe them upon paper.
The present volume is a collection of these vagrant pastimes, some of
which have wandered far, while others have never before appeared to any
eye save the writer's.
To call them home, introduce them to each other, and properly house
them, seems a parental duty.
If in them there is a thought that shall inspire others of my profession
to feel the dignity and responsibility of the calling, their publication
will not have been in vain.
The intent being good, the fruit cannot be evil.
The Author.
DEDICATION.
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, WHOSE DEVOTION, ENERGY, AND
PERSEVERANCE LED ME TO DRINK AT THE FOUNTAIN OF
KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH, UNTIL I SAW BEAUTY THEREIN,
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
The true end of life is to elevate man
In body, in mind, and in spirit,
That here he may serve some beneficent plan,
Then a mansion in heaven inherit.
INDEX.
PAGE.
A Beacon Light 129
A Boy 81
A Lesson from Nature 189
All Things are Second-handed 212
Alone 140
Amityville 215
An Open Book 175
A Picture 200
Arbor Day Tribute 84
Artist Nature 119
Boding Snow 174
Buttercups and Daisies 87
Communion with Nature 96
Courage and Faith 26
Discontent 132
Drifting Away 158
Duty Done 42
Ere and at my Call 173
Evil Habits 56
Faces I Read 214
Fact versus Form 29
Fidelity 219
Finis 231
Fragments 127
Good Habits 53
Heartstrings 147
Important Moments 166
Incompetence 27
Indulgence 61
Interest 31
Invocation to the Muse 9
Kindred Spirits 160
Lake George, N. Y. 106
Liberty 154
Lies 145
Life's Emergencies 58
"Lo," The Departed 157
Love 142
Many 40
Maple at my Father's Door 115
Memory 130
Memory and Reason 32
Mind Awakened 71
Mirrors 39
Morning Flowers 118
Mountain Brook 99
Music 120
My Brother's Birthday 196
My Choice 76
My Mother's Love 192
My Room in Boyhood's Days 202
Nature's Child 105
Nature's Voice 204
Needs and Powers 19
Oceanus' Mirrors 116
On Brooklyn Bridge 183
Our Battlefield 49
Our Politics 134
Our Profession 11
Perhaps 165
Pious Pie Poem Puns 218
Poundridge, N. Y. 205
Rest 123
Retrospection 138
Robin Redbreast 110
Rye 95
School Days 162
Selfishness 137
Some Characters I Can't Admire 180
Some Characters I Much Adore 177
Soul Speaks to Soul 48
Strand Despair 60
Success 125
Sunset 135
Survival of the Fittest 66
The Dandelion 90
The Desirable Undefined 34
The Difference 67
The Evening before my Brother's Fifty-third Birthday 194
The Farmer 112
The Flowers I Love 91
The Fringed Gentian 89
The Future 170
The Goldenrod 86
The Hair 152
Their Life is what they Make It 185
The Lone Bird 187
The Morning Glory 94
The Ogre 72
The Old Farm 114
The Requirements of the Hour 80
The Rose 85
The Second Sunday in May 104
The Senses 44
The Stream's Story 102
The Teacher's Soliloquy 63
The Thrush 108
The Tree of State 82
The Unwritten Letter 210
The Voice 198
Tim 208
To a Mountain Brook 101
To My Daughter Blanche in Heaven 197
Trailing Arbutus 93
True Wealth 217
Twilight Hour 150
Who Knows? 149
Who Shall Judge? 169
INVOCATION TO THE MUSE.
Didactic muse Calliope,
Expand thy soothing silent wings,
Touch chords of measured harmony
Wherein the soul ecstatic sings,
Let language fraught with living truth
Find such expression by thy art,
As shall assist the guides of youth
To fire the soul and win the heart.
Remove the barriers which so long
Have held in thraldom many a mind,
Sing to the deaf a ransom-song,
Be eyes to those whose souls are blind;
Teach those who mould the plastic mind
To know that God hath never given
A mission weightier, more refined,
To angels round the courts of heaven,
Than that of training human minds
Committed unto human hands,
In which the spirit e'er survives
And through eternity expands.
Paint truthfully the living dead
Whose sensibilities were slain
By tyros, oft unskilled, unread,
In all the workings of the brain;
Whose concepts of the avenues
That reach the mind of tender youth,
Are labyrinths of tangled views
Devoid of art, science, and truth;
Touch but that chord of magic power
Which gives the soul augmented bliss,
And lifts it for the present hour
Above the world's base selfishness;
Then let the search-light of the soul
Illumine every page that's read,
Until an animated whole
Shall supersede the living dead.
Then, then shall dawn the golden day
When Ignorance shall shamed-faced fly
Before the potent living ray
Of mind, touched by effulgency
That pours its light in vital force,
Upon the mind of plastic youth,
And leads it gently to the source
Of light and scientific truth.
OUR PROFESSION.
There's an art in our profession,
Which cannot be wholly learned
From all books in our possession,
Though their leaves be deftly turned
Till the mind shall grasp the meaning
Of each truth they may contain,
Yet there remains a gleaning
Not a product of the brain.
One may know the truths of science
Till his mind may have full store,
Or may place some great reliance
On ancient and modern lore;
He may count the stars in heaven,
He may trace them in their course,
And from data that is given
He may prove creation's source;
He may use the best of diction
To portray his studied thought;
He may draw from truth and fiction
All the charm with which they're fraught;
He may be a friend of Nature
And may understand her laws;
He may prove embryo creature
Has within itself a "cause";
He may fathom all creation
And dwell among the stars,
Visit every land and nation
And return with honor's scars;
Yet he may lack a power,--
Occult to scientific truth--
Which is Heaven's richest dower
To the guides of ardent youth.
Though all these may give a polish
To the gem that lights the soul,
They are weak, useless, and foolish,
When they're taken for the whole
Of all the powers required
To entrance the youthful mind,
With a spirit so inspired
As to touch the eyes of blind
With a bright illumination
That shall prove itself to be
More than a corruscation
Of a short-lived ecstasy.
By intuition, children know
A heart that cares for them;
They recognize a friend or foe,
At instantaneous ken.
No mask can shield a fraud or fool,
E'en from a puerile mind;
It knows by rules not learned at school
The way true hearts to find.
An earnest love, unbounded, firm,--
A God-gift from our birth--
By far outweighs the noblest charm
Can be acquired on earth.
Who has not drunk deep at the well
Of childhood's innocence,
Or thinks that he should ever dwell
At such an eminence,
That he can never bend to raise
And cheer a longing heart,
Will waste his precious hours and days,
And finally depart
Without such fruitage or reward
As ever should be given
To him, who serves master or Lord,
And hopes for bliss in heaven.
Who sees no soul-buds here expand
To blossom by and by,
Hath fathomed not the great command
For which we live and die.
The State demands that every son
And daughter shall be free
From ignorance and vice which run
Toward crime and misery.
The future of our noble State
Dwells now in plastic form;
If she her past would emulate
And meet the coming storm
Of chaos, whose portentous wing
Seems hovering not afar,
In every school-room we should sing
Of banner and of star
That gave the land to Liberty,
And with a bold huzza
Proclaim that he who would be free
Must honor right and law.
Who serves his State and fellow-man
And plies his skill at best,
Assists to carry out the plan
To make all truly blest;
He may not sit in marble hall
Where legislators meet,
Nor may he rear fine towers tall,
Or dwell in a retreat
Where monks and nuns with solemn prayer
Pour out their orison;
The test of faith is filial care,
And duty nobly done.
Minds let us mould, men may we rear,
For God, for State, for man,
Using the right without a fear
To mar the heaven-born plan.
The test of great didactic skill
Is not to train the few
Whose active genius, tact, and will
Are always plain to view;
But he who takes an inert mind,
Housed in a sluggish frame,
And forms such man as God designed,
Deserves an honored name.
Like Sisyphus some ever roll
The same old round of things
Which dwarf the mind and starve the soul,
Until they long for wings
To fly from dull monotony,
Which carries in its train
That wreck of thought--Despondency--
Which preys on heart and brain.
The artist knows the colors best
That blend in harmony
With richest cloud-scenes, in the west,
That gild the sunset sky;
The minstrel knows what song to sing
To please the multitude;
His fingers deftly touch the strings
That yield response subdued
When weary soul would find relief
From sorrow's withering sigh,
Or when the heart is bowed with grief,
And tear-drops dew the eye;
But when the soul is full of joy,
How jubilant the strain
The tactful artist will employ
To please the heart and brain.
If those who toil in lowly spheres
Employ such artful ways
To charm the dull and listless ears
That such may sound their praise,
Why should the artist of the mind
Shrink from that noble aim
That seeks to elevate mankind,
And light a deathless flame!
Or why should he who shapes the lives
And destiny of man,
Be less exact than he who strives
From mercenary plan.
No instrument man ever made--
None ever can be found--
No matter when or where 'tis played,
Will yield so rich a sound
As that which falls from human tongue
When heart speaks unto heart,
Nor are its mysteries among
The hidden things of art;
A tyro on life's winding road
Reads understandingly
Each tone and word, each varied mode
The tongue and form portray.
Our heart's intents are from our looks
More plainly to be read,
Than thoughts expressed in printed books
Whose language oft seems dead,
Because it lacks a living form--
A voiceless, dull decree
That of itself has little charm
For youth's activity.
A potent charm of living light
Flows with resistless force,
Dispelling clouds of mental night
That meet its onward course,
When all the soul is centred in
The great and primal thought
That services which hearts would win,
With price can ne'er be bought.
Such service heaven alone repays
E'en though on earth 'tis done,
Its echoes last through endless days,
And dies but with the sun.
A mercenary soul must find
A more congenial field
Than that of training human mind
Wherein a soul's concealed,
If it would live out all the days
Allotted unto man,
And bask in all the genial rays
Revealed in God's great plan.
No lubrication of the nerves
Has ever yet been found,
For him who like a menial serves
Dull lesson's daily round;
But gnawing friction, stern and gaunt,
Tears flesh and brain away,
While ghosts nocturnal ever haunt
A soul with fell dismay,
Whose mercenary greed has led
Itself into a snare
That counts by scores its strangled dead,
Its hundreds, in despair.
He doubly lives who can forget
Himself and his own ease,
While toiling patiently to set
New gems in crowns he sees,
That may adorn some other head
Than that he calls his own,
And animate the germs wide spread
In seeds already sown.
* * * * *
To skim the surface of knowledge,
And seldom its root to reach,
Is a recipe one may offer
To direct "How Not To Teach."
NEEDS AND POWERS.
I know of no profession
'Mong profane or divine,
Excelling in its mission
The power embraced in mine.
It reaches earth and heaven
Through heart and soul of man,
It lives beyond the present--
Eternity doth span.
Mind in its first formation,
While in its plastic state,
Receives primal impressions
Which make it vile or great.
When soil of thought is fertile
And ready for the seeds,
It may bring precious fruitage,
Or vile and noxious weeds.
No sower should be careless,
For harvest much depends
Upon the well-selected seeds,
With mental soil he blends.
If field be rich and mellow
And no good seed be sown,
With tangled mass of vileness
It will be overgrown,
And shield the deadly serpent,
The basilisk of sin,
That far exhales its pois'nous breath,
Then crawls its den within.
No atoms of pollution
In matter e'er was known,
So vile or so destructive
As soul by sin o'erthrown.
The vilest spot upon the earth,
Through sunshine, air, and rain,
May be transformed in ev'ry part
And purified again.
The fields where chaos reigned supreme
And Nature frowned aghast,
By patient-toil have fruitage borne
And blossomed fragrance cast.
The wreck of spheres by traction's laws
Hurled wildly into space,
May gather atoms round itself
And find some resting place
Where it may serve creation's end,
And 'mong the planets roll,
True to the laws of gravity
That marks its outer pole.
The mind and soul can never
Within themselves find rest,
When all the sin's pollutions
Are harbored in the breast.
Then sow good seed, brave teacher,
And deeply plant with care,
That both here and hereafter
Rich harvest it may bear.
The sowing may be silent--
It may be but a tear,
Its strength is in its purpose,
Its aim must be sincere.
It should not be a rite or creed,
But wider far than these,
It should encompass God and man,
Home and antipodes.
To learn the truths of science,
Know tables, books and charts,
To analyze the potent thrill
That fires all earnest hearts,
To revel in the mysteries
That lie deep in the earth,
To give the proper data
When planets had their birth,
To know the exact elements
That constitute the sun,
The causes why swift currents
Within the ocean run,
The ratio of the vapors
That color sunset skies,
Time's infinitesimal fraction
When planets set and rise,
To solve the problems of the air,
The secrets of the deep,
Are all intrinsic subjects
And worthy of our keep.
But these alone are worthless,
They need augmented force
To lead mind toward the fountain
From which it had its source.
They leave one vital question--
Development of man--
Without e'en crude solution,
Without a working plan.
They leave the mighty problem
Of Maker and the Made,
Devoid of any sequence,
Or any plan portrayed.
These are of greatest moment
To persons and to State,
Upon their wise adjustment
Must hang progression's fate.
Cold are the truths of science,
Lifeless their every plan,
Until in living presence,
They're crystalized in man.
As hidden truths are useless
And aid not human skill,
So slumber mighty forces
Through lack of human will.
To know the right is not enough,
It must be given power
Through culture of the heart and soul,
If it shall blessings shower.
To State, to manhood and to God
Must mind be wholly given,
Ere truth will shine a beacon light,
To illumine earth and heaven.
All things were made but to subserve
Man's powers to improve,
And beautify his being here
Through charity and love.
Power, gold, and wealth are agencies
Placed in a creature's hand
To serve an end, but not to rule,--
Obey, but not command.
As mind and soul matter surpass
And error flies from truth,
So should we train the nobler parts
Of plastic, trusting youth.
The sacred man by God ordained,
Links sinful earth with heaven,
But his success oft must depend
On how instruction's given.
The holy task of training mind
Is not a trivial thing,
Its influence lives, grows and expands
Till harvest it shall bring.
No task, to human hands assigned,
Excels in force and weight
The grave responsibilities
Of those who educate.
Let knowledge of the sciences,
Skill in didactic art,
Power in the impulse of the soul
A knowledge to impart,
A love for God and human kind,
Forgetfulness of self,
A heart devoted to the cause
More than to worldly pelf,
Be given as a heritage
To those who fain would teach,
Then living truth shall flourish,
And all mankind shall reach.
* * * * *
There's an ebb and flow of sentiment
In educational tides,
Which oft discards some solid old facts,
And on wild new hobbies rides.
The educator of modern times
Must prove the false and the true,
Hold fast the worthy of the old,
Unprejudiced, test the new.
COURAGE AND FAITH.
Courage and Faith are of heavenly birth,
Though sent down to our lowly earth
To cheer the heart of man;
They are only strong when the human soul
Yields perfect trust and full control
To heaven's benignant plan.
Nature expands when this God-sent pair
Finds a fertile heart that needs the care
Of a messenger divine,
And permits their strength to succor give
That truth may grow and honor live
To yield their fruit benign.
* * * * *
Who gives no sunshine from his soul
Must live in darkness ever,
For Nature scorns to such degree,
She blinds a sordid giver.
But he who scatters noble deeds,
And lives to bless mankind,
Shall see the beauties God reveals
To men with hearts refined.
INCOMPETENCE.
Sometimes our soul within us burns
To see dark Ignorance aspire
To move toward light a mind that yearns
For knowledge that may lift it higher
Upon the royal road of truth,
While every word and act and thought
Betrays an atmosphere so fraught
With lack of common sense and lore,
We plead for some almighty power
To save from such our precious youth.