Old Ugly-Face by Talbot Mundy

To Collier Young Lest distance dim good fellowship

Our hearts know better than to envy men, Still less their women, who by tongue and pen With soulless ideology declare: "What dies Is all we live for. Violence and lies, Our high aims justify. The ends we seek Are things, more things. The poor and weak, Unnourished in the headlong race to pay New debts to evil while we toil and pray To politics for wealth--do they not, day by day Receive, of our good charity, their bread? Are we not wonderful?" We are. We are. And yet, There was a Voice that more than hinted how By means more manly than we practice now A wide world's consciousness can lose its dread Of drifting toward endless death:instead New visioned, may create a world at last Worth loving for its future, not its past.