Waste by Charlotte Perkins Gilman — Read

Doth any man consider what we waste / Here in God's garden? While the sea is full, / The sunlight smiles, and all the blessed earth / Offers her wealth to our intelligence. / We waste our food, enough for half the world, / In helpless luxury among the rich, / In helpless ignorance among the poor, / In spilling what we stop to quarrel for. / We waste our wealth in failing to produce, / In robbing of each other every day / In place of making things,-our human crown. / We waste our strength, in endless effort poured / Like water on the sand, still toiling on / To make a million things we do not want. / We waste our lives, those which should still lead on / Each new one gaining on the age behind, / In doing what we all have done before. / We waste our love,-poured up into the sky, / Across the ocean, into desert lands, / Sunk in one narrow circle next ourselves,- / While these, our brothers, suffer-are alone. / Ye may not pass the near to love the far; / Ye may not love the near and stop at that. / Love spreads through man, not over or around! / Yea, grievously we waste; and all the time / Humanity is wanting,-wanting sore. / Waste not, my brothers, and ye shall not want!