How Beautiful Is Gentleness

 Gentleness
by Archibald Lampman 

 Blind multitudes that jar confusèdly
 At strife, earth's children, will ye never rest
From toils made hateful here, and dawns distressed
With ravelling self-engendered misery?
 And will ye never know, till sleep shall see
 Your graves, how dreadful and how dark indeed
 Are pride, self-will, and blind-voiced anger, greed,
And malice with its subtle cruelty?
 How beautiful is gentleness, whose face
 Like April sunshine, or the summer rain,
 Swells everywhere the buds of generous thought;
So easy, and so sweet it is; its grace
 Smoothes out so soon the tangled knots of pain.
Can ye not learn it? will ye not be taught?