A Little While

The railway whistle, the tram-car rush, the crowd in the busy town,
The noisy whirlpool of human life where souls immortal drown,
Where men are little and gold is much, and the Nimrod who reins today
Would build a yellow tower to heaven if heaven were won that way;
Theres a weight that lays like lead at my heart as the struggling throng goes by,
Oh these are the women and these are the men for who Christ came to die.

Theres a babble of many voices that talk of right and wrong,
Mens eyes are bright with passion, mens voices harsh and strong,
They rise in loud impeachment, of God, the father of all,
The judge the suns of the universe by the rule of the painted ball,
They ask strange questions, long unheard, that angle fear to speak
And they gauge the sum of a Saviours work by the sermon of once a week.

Each babbles the wish in his heart half-formed, backed up with a shallow thought,
Of stray crumbs caught of the bitter bread by the latter-day sages wrought,
And some will doubt of faith and love because mens hearts a dry,
And raise their feeble questionings of a fear they would fain deny.
They seek for the truth of the heart of things for the pleasure the search may give
And not as the light of a guiding lamp by which mens souls may live.

Yet out on the hillside the sunlight streamed, and over the sparkling sea,
And a sky-lark lost in the upper blue is pouring his song to me,
A light breeze moves in the waving corn and rustles the fern asleep,
And thee seems no place between earth and sky for a human soul to weep
Weak faith takes heart for the whole world lies in the light of a Fathers smile,
And set in the midst of a heaven of love is the shade of earths little while

David McKee Wright
Unpublished
Tussock and Asphalt Rhymes No 37
- DMWs NZ Notebook 1899.