Just do your best,
And leave the rest
To Him who gave you
Life,–
And Zeal for Labour,–
And the Joy of Strife,–
And Zest of Love,–
And all that lifts your soul above
The lower things.
Life’s truest harvest is in what we _would_,
And strive our best for,
Not most in what we _could_.
The things we count supreme
Stand, haply, not so high
In God’s esteem
As _How_ and _Why_.
All-Seeing Sight
Cleaves through the husk of things,
Right to the Roots and Springs,–
Sees all things whole,
And measures less the body than the soul.
All-Righteous Right
Will weigh men’s motives,
Not their deeds alone.
End and Beginning unto Him are one;
And _would_ for _could_ shall oft, perchance, atone.
Motives are seeds,
From which at times spring deeds
Not equal to the soul’s outreaching hope.
Strive for the stars!
Count nought well done but best!
Then, with brave patience, leave the rest
To Him who knows.
He’ll judge you justly ere the record close.
—————
The End
And that’s the End of the Poem
© Poetry Monster, 2021.
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Poetry Monster — the multilingual library of poetic works. Here you’ll find original poems, poetry translations, ancient verses, ballads and even folk tales.
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Some external links: The Bat’s Poetry Cave. — Fledermaus’s poetry site. Talking Writing Monster. — the irreverent and irrelevant chatter on subjects both serious and not quite. A free for all board. You can scribble anything on it without registration (but it doesn’t let spammers in). You can even post your poems. Qwant.com. — a search engine from France. It’s an alternative because there are a few alternatives, like Bing, Duckduckgo, and Ecosia. And there is Yandex, the ultimate language-oriented search engine for the Russophone world. Commercial Links: Russian Commerce – the foreign trade assistance agency Other links: Poems and poetry in Russian (if you are reading this in English, as you obviously are, then you’d have to switch the language, the language switch is on the menu. More on languages)