Ores you’ll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and steady (That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors. God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready, Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I’ve found it, and it’s yours! Yes, your ‘Never-never country’--yes, your ‘edge of cultivation’ And ‘no sense in going further’--till I crossed the range to see. God forgive me! No, _I_ didn’t. It’s God’s present to our nation. Anybody might have found it but--His Whisper came to Me! THE WAGE-SLAVES [Page 70] Oh glorious are the guarded heights Where guardian souls abide-- Self-exiled from our gross delights-- Above, beyond, outside: An ampler arc their spirit swings-- Commands a juster view-- We have their word for all these things, Nor doubt their words are true. Yet we the bondslaves of our day, Whom dirt and danger press-- Co-heirs of insolence, delay, And leagued unfaithfulness-- Such is our need must seek indeed And, having found, engage The men who merely do the work For which they draw the wage. From forge and farm and mine and bench, Deck, altar, outpost lone-- Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench, Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne-- Creation’s cry goes up on high From age to cheated age: ‘Send us the men who do the work For which they draw the wage.’ Words cannot help nor wit achieve, Nor e’en the all-gifted fool, Too weak to enter, bide, or leave The lists he cannot rule. Beneath the sun we count on none Our evil to assuage, Except the men that do the work For which they draw the wage. When through the Gates of Stress and Strain Comes forth the vast Event-- The simple, sheer, sufficing, sane Result of labour spent-- They that have wrought the end unthought Be neither saint nor sage, But men who merely did the work For which they drew the wage. Wherefore to these the Fates shall bend (And all old idle things--) Wherefore on these shall Power attend Beyond the grasp of kings: Each in his place, by right, not grace, Shall rule his heritage-- The men who simply do the work For which they draw the wage. Not such as scorn the loitering street, Or waste to earn its praise, Their noontide’s unreturning heat About their morning ways: But such as dower each mortgaged hour Alike with clean courage-- Even the men who do the work For which they draw the wage-- Men like to Gods that do the work For which they draw the wage-- Begin--continue--close the work For which they draw the wage! THE BURIAL [Page 74] C. J. RHODES, buried in the Matoppos, April 10, 1902