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Wisdom of the Ages

By George A. Fuller

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XXI

Sing, oh, my soul, thy sweetest song!

Strife is but for a day, while love endures forever!

Over the miasma fields and swamps filled with dank and poisonous growths,

Let its clear sweet tones echo far and wide!

Over the valleys richly laden with flowers, fruit and grain;

Over the world's great cities, where discord and lust and strife are ever breeding;

Over the wretched haunts where the sunbeams never lick up the dews of night, where children live and work midst awful curses, discords, and fruits of riotous passion;

Send forth, oh, soul, thy noblest song!

And let love's sweet sunbeams disperse all clouds of gloom.

Into prison cells, into hospitals, into retreats, where’er dwarfed and stunted ones may dwell;

Into peasants’ huts, into kingly palaces, into factories, where swarm earth's toiling millions;

Into the busy marts of men, where merchants bicker and strive for that which far oftener lays a curse than a blessing upon him who receives;

Into the great colleges and universities, where men oftener give their time and talents to the acquiring of that knowledge that leads more to strife and disquietude than to that peace and serenity which is the goal toward which all wisdom leads;

Into the churches, where the preaching and the living far too often fail to accord with one another;

Into the great battlefields, hells of discordant notes, agonizing cries, and shrieks of despair;

Yea, into all places man dwells, where either peace is not, or love may not yet abide;

Send forth, oh, soul, thy noblest song!

For where thy voice is heard, no discord is!

Not over the hills and mountains of the earth;

Not from star to star, where angels and archangels dwell;

Not up to the centre of things terrestrial and spiritual, where the ineffable light ever is;

But on through abysmal depths where darkness reigns;

Through hells mundane and supra-mundane, where souls are struggling upward; Where the light is just beginning to penetrate, and souls lethargic, shaking themselves free from chains and fetters, awake to the first faint glimmer of that which is to be their glorious destiny.

Then sing aloud, oh, soul!

Let thy voice be heard afar!

Send forth thy sweetest, noblest lay! Wake all the hills, and shake all the depths of earth.

Yea, tremble, oh, ye hills, at the sound of my voice!

For thy doom is sealed; hate and anger cannot withstand the all-conquering power of love that endureth forever!