Explore "Mission" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
If you are sighing for a lofty work, / If great ambitions dominate your mind, / Just watch yourself and see you do not shirk / The common little ways of being kind.
If you are dreaming of a future goal, / When, crowned with glory, men shall own your power, / Be careful that you let no struggling soul / Go by unaided in the present hour.
If you are moved to pity for the earth, / And long to aid it, do not look so high, / You pass some poor, dumb creature faint with thirst- / All life is equal in the eternal eye.
If you would help to make the wrong things right, / Begin at home: there lies a lifetime's toil. / Weed your own garden fair for all men's sight, / Before you plan to till another's soil.
God chooses His own leaders in the world, / And from the rest He asks but willing hands. / As mighty mountains into place are hurled, / While patient tides may only shape the sands.