In This Hour

by Arthur Davidson Ficke

I pray you, in this hour's confusion,
Go not back into the old belief
That all man's life is brutish, harsh and brief
And that what has been, always will be so.

Earth has seen many a hope's overthrow
And many a noble dream go down in grief;
Yet still persists the parable of the leaf
That Spring unfolds above the endless snow.

Be not too sure that evil in this hour
Has strength to make as nothing all our gain
And leave us naked to the whirlwind's wrath.

Through earlier, darker days than these,
some power
Of man, mere man, endured its night of pain,
Then strode one footstep higher up the path.

[Reprinted from a broadside issued by the Am. Rationalist Fed.]

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