[Editor: This poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton was published in Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics (1908).]
II
The Limit
Time took each lonely Self and sent a thrill
Along his heart for his affinity,
So came the home and hearth, until there be
The wider kinship — ever wider till
Neighbour on neighbour smiles in frank goodwill.
But yet the nations snarl across the sea,
Ere Self for universal love is free,
And ere the Conscience says “ye shall not kill.”
Yet the long Purpose of the Master Mind
Draws mankind forward to his gen’rous fate
Till each shall feel his kinship with his kind,
Spite of all guise of colour or estate,
Shall love to love whom once he loved to hate —
Then Self itself in other Selves shall find.
Source:
Mary E. Fullerton, Moods and Melodies: Sonnets and Lyrics, Melbourne: Thomas C. Lothian, 1908, p. 23
Editor’s notes:
ere = (archaic) before (from the Middle English “er”, itself from the Old English “aer”, meaning early or soon)
ye = (archaic; dialectal) you (still in use in some places, e.g. in Cornwall, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Northern England; it can used as either the singular or plural form of “you”, although the plural form is the more common usage)
Leave a Reply