Explore "Brotherhood" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When in the even ways of life / The old world jogs along, / Our little coloured flags we flaunt: / Our little separate selves we vaunt: / Each pipes his native song. / And jealousy and greed and pride / Join their ungodly hands, / And this round lovely world divide / Into opposing lands.
But let some crucial hour of pain / Sound from the tower of time, / Then consciousness of brotherhood / Wakes in each heart the latent good, / And men become sublime. / As swarming insects of the night, / Fly when the sun bursts in, / Self fades, before love's radiant light, / And all the world is kin.
God, what a place this earth would be / If that uplifting thought, / Born of some vast world accident, / Into our daily lives were blent, / And in each action wrought. / But while we let the old sins flock / Back to our hearts again, / In flame, and flood, and earthquake shock, / Thy voice must speak to men.