1 <br />The kind of a man for you and me! <br />He faces the world unflinchingly, <br />And smites, as long as the wrong resists, <br />With a knuckled faith and force like fists: <br />He lives the life he is preaching of, <br />And loves where most is the need of love; <br />His voice is clear to the deaf man's ears, <br />And his face sublime through the blind man's tears; <br />The light shines out where the clouds were dim, <br />And the widow's prayer goes up for him; <br />The latch is clicked at the hovel door <br />And the sick man sees the sun once more, <br />And out o'er the barren fields he sees <br />Springing blossoms and waving trees, <br />Feeling as only the dying may, <br />That God's own servant has come that way, <br />Smoothing the path as it still winds on <br />Through the golden gate where his loved have gone. <br /> <br />2 <br />The kind of a man for me and you! <br />However little of worth we do <br />He credits full, and abides in trust <br />That time will teach us how more is just. <br />He walks abroad, and he meets all kinds <br />Of querulous and uneasy minds, <br />And sympathizing, he shares the pain <br />Of the doubts that rack us, heart and brain; <br />And knowing this, as we grasp his hand <br />We are surely coming to understand! <br />He looks on sin with pitying eyes-- <br />E'en as the Lord, since Paradise--, <br />Else, should we read, Though our sins should glow <br />As scarlet, they shall be white as snow--? <br />And feeling still, with a grief half glad, <br />That the bad are as good as the good are bad, <br />He strikes straight out for the Right-- and he <br />Is the kind of a man for you and me!<br /><br />James Whitcomb Riley<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-kind-of-a-man/
