However set apart by fate,

However cold or dull or shy,

Or shrinking from the public eye.

The world is common to the race,

And nowhere is a hiding-place;

Before, behind, on either side,

The surging masses press, divide;

Behind, before, with rhythmic beat,

Is heard the tread of marching feet;

To left, to right, they urge, they fare,

And touch us here, and touch us there.

Hold back your garment as you will,

The crowding world will rub it still.

Then, since such contact needs must be,

What shall it do for you and me?

Shall it be cold and hard alone,

Fruitless, unwelcome, and unmeant,

Put by as a dull accident,

While we pass onward, deaf and blind,

With no relenting look behind?

Or as when two round drops of rain,

Let fall upon a window-pane,

Wander, divergent, from their course,

Led by some blind, instinctive force,

Mingle and blend and interfuse,

Their separate shapes and being lose,

Made one thereafter and the same,

Identical in end and aim,

Nor brighter gleam, nor faster run,

Because they are not two, but one?

Or shall we meet in warring mood,

The contact of the fire and flood,

Decreed by Nature and by Will,

The one to warm, the one to chill,

The one to burn, the one to slake,

To thwart and counteract and make

Each other’s wretchedness, and dwell

In hate irreconcilable?

And carries out the fatal law

Which makes the weaker thing to be

The prey of strength and tyranny;

A careless touch, half scorn, half mirth,

A brief resistance, little worth;

A little blaze soon quenched and marred,

And ashes ever afterward?

No; let us meet, since meet we must,

Not shaking off the common dust,

As if we feared our fellow-men,

And fain would walk aloof from them;

Not fruitlessly, as rain meets rain,

To lose ourselves and nothing gain;

Not fiercely, prey to adverse fate,

And not to spoil and desolate.

But as we meet and touch, each day,

The many travellers on our way,

Let every such brief contact be

A glorious, helpful ministry;

The contact of the soil and seed,

Each giving to the other’s need,

Each helping on the other’s best,

And blessing, each, as well as blest.