Our Kind of a Man.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1917, 18 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Our Kind of a Man.

The kind of a man for you and me ! He faces the world unflinchingly And smites as long as the -wrong resists, With a knuckled faith and force-like fists ; He lives the life he is preaching of, And loves where most is the need of love ; His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears, And his face sublime through the blind man's tears ; The light shines out where the clouds were dim, And the widow's prayer goes up for him ; The latch is clicked at the hovel door, And the sick man sees the sun once more, And out o'er the barren field he sees Springing blossoms and waving trees, Feeling, as only the dying may, That God's own servant has come that way, Smoothing the path as it still winds on Through the golden gate where his loved have gone. The kind of man for me and you, However little of worth we do, He credits full, and abides in trust That time will teach us how more is just. He walks abroad and he meets all kinds' Of querulous and uneasy minds, And, sympathizing, he shares the pain Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain, And, knowing this, as we grasp his hand, We are surely coming to understand 1 He looks on sin with pitying eyes — E'en as the Lord, since Paradise — Else, should we read, though our should glow As scarlet they should be white as snow 1 And feeling still, with a grief half glad That the bad are as good as the good are bad, He strikes straight out for the Right — and he Is the kind of man for you and me 1 By James Whitcovib Riley.