page: 52
A Choice
- THE flood of utter change is loosed. A space
- Is ours yet, for its coming to prepare.
- Shall we build dams with cautious, clumsy care,
- Or stand with idle hands and frightened face,
- And so be whirled all broken from our place,
- Or perish with the dams we builded there?
- Or shall we dig a broad, deep channel, where
- Most fields may feel the flood's benign embrace?
- Thus turned ’twill be a calm majestic flood
- Of plenty, peace, and fertilising power,
- Whose banks fresh flowers of love and joy shall deck.
- Oppose it: at the inevitable hour,
- Tumultuous, black with ruin, red with blood,
- ’Twill come—and you shall have no chance but wreck!
