Fear not the goad, fear not the pace, Plead not to fall from out the race-- It is your own Self driving you, Your Self that you have never known, Seeing your little self alone, Your Self, high-seated charioteer, Master of cowardice and fear, Your Self that sees the shining length Of all the fearful road ahead; Knows that the terrors that you dread Are pigmies to your splendid strength; Strength you have never even guessed, Strength that has never needed rest. Your Self that holds the mastering rein, Seeing beyond the sweat and pain And anguish of your driven soul The patient beauty of the goal. Fighting upon the terror field Where man and Fate come breast to breast, Pressed by a thousand foes to yield, Tortured and wounded without rest, You cried, "Be merciful, O Life! The strongest spirit soon must break Before this all-unequal strife, This endless fight for failure's sake." But Fate, unheeding, lifted high His sword and thrust you through to die. And then there came one strong and great, Who towered high o'er Chance and Fate, Who bound your wound and eased your pain And bade you rise and fight again. And from some source you did not guess Gushed a great tide of happiness-- A courage mightier than the sun-- You rose and fought, and fighting, won. It was your own Self saving you, Your Self no man has ever known, Looking on flesh and blood alone; The Self that lives as close to God As roots that feed beneath the sod. That one who stands behind the screen, Looks through the window of your eyes-- A being out of Paradise. The Self no human eye hath seen, The living one who never tires, Fed by the deep eternal fires. Your flaming star, with two-edged sword, Made in the likeness of the Lord. Angel and guardian at the gate, Master of Death and King of Fate. Perhaps more musical and exquisite in its technic is the following (by Edith M. Thomas in the _Century_), yet one looks in vain for the note of positive assurance that sings and rings out of the poem just quoted. Now one expects in poetry something more than rhymed philosophy, of course, and sheer beauty of rhythm has more than once endowed paucity of thought with an almost immortality. But the content is important, none the less. In the preceding poem one feels a mighty conviction forcing its way through every limitation to the goal of expression. The work of the older and better known poetess is more clearly poetic--to those who know the path and know the way its Sphinx-like questionings evoke their own answer in the deeps of consciousness. To the many, however, the first poem must reveal more. THE UNKNOWING