Canadian Poetry and College

          I have just recently moved into a dorm at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.  Classes start tomorrow and I'm getting excited...and nervous.  Oh not scared in the way most students are at this time.  I'm not too worried about the workload or the studying (that much anyway).  I am very anxious about how my time at college will affect my character and my future chance/choices.  I want to stay true to myself, and yet be able to explore all that I can be.  I want to improve myself, but sometimes change for the sake of change becomes negative change. 

          Also, I want to make a difference.  I know that is a completely cliche thing to say, but it's true.  I don't care right now about a really wide sphere of influence and fame like many do.  Eventually I want to be an High School or college English teacher and that will include a great deal of influence.  But for now I simply want to make people's lives better for knowing me.  Not just feel-good/happy/makes me smile better.  If I make someone hate me for the rest of their life, and yet plant a seed in their mind that eventually leads them to making better decisions or turns them to God (even if they don't realize it) I'll be happy with that.  I don't plan on making enemies.  I know a lot of people think I hate everyone because I'm not the always-smiling and constantly-chipper and likes-everyone type.  My mother has scolded me for years about not being more social.  That has already changed quite a bit in my first few days as a college student (it's easier to make friends and meet people when no one knows anyone, everyone needs new friends, and no one has any prior expectations about you).  Yet I am not about to give into post-modernistic ideas that everything is okay and there are no moral absolutes.  In short I want to spread God's love and message to those around me.  It doesn't have to be through words necessarily.  Leading by example is often the best method.  And I will need God's help to keep strong and choose the right course. 

          This poem comes from a book of poetry that I picked up in Victoria, Canada of all places.  The author is Donald A. Fraser and his poetry is amazing!  I've read the whole book (Pebbles and Shells) a dozen times and my favorite poems hundreds!  The book itself is old, and was published in 1909 (I LOVE old books!!!!!).  There is one poem in particular that I think describes my hopes perfectly.

The Builder    

"gloomy heath"

An angel came and carried me away

To where a lonely wilderness held sway

For leagues around.  Its dreary face was strewed

With stunted scrub and rocky fragments rude;

No human habitation soothed my eye;

So sight save gloomy heath and leaden sky.

The angel set me in the midst, and said:

"Build."  And in great amaze I turned my head,

And gazed about.  "Build what?"  I cried, but lo!

The angel vanished ere I saw him go.

In grief I threw myself upon the ground,

And lay sometime, as one doth in a swound;

But ever was my sleep with visions filled

Of that stern angel who aye bade me "Build."

"Build, build,"

I rose.  a wild-fowl cleft the barren sky;

"Build, build," too, seemed the burden of his cry;

And echoed, "Build," a cricket in the grass.

"What shall I build, and how?"  I cried.  "Alas!

What can he build who no supplies commands?

How can he build who has no tools save hands?"

I sat me down upon a grassy mound,

And as my sullen glances stole around,

I saw a tiny ant, with fervid will,

At ceaseless work upon her patient hill;

"Can I not do the same,"

A grain of sand, a little piece of straw,

A withered leaf --of such materials raw

She built her home.  "Why then," aloud cried I,

"Can I not do the same, and, striving, try

To rear myself a hut, a dwelling, found

Of such crude things as here are strewn around?"

"O God," I cried, "help me myself to help!

O Thou, who carest for the lion's whelp,

Aid me, Thy child, with all my might, to do

this solemn task which Thou hast set me to."

In eager haste I doffed my coat, and seized

Rough blocks of stone, and these up-piled, and squeezed

Into the crevices thick plaster-mud

That edged a near-by springlet's precious flood.

A doorway and a window-space I left

"Rough blocks of stone, and these up-piled"

In the coarse walls:  and then, with hands grown deft,

I sloped the growing walls, till o'er my head

They well-nigh met;  when, last of all, I spread

A large flat stone that taxed my utmost strength;

And thus my humble cot was built at length.

A couch I made upon the earthen floor

Of the parched grass that spread the moorland o'er.

When this was done the day had gone to rest

Beyond the distant portals of the west.

With my mind and body tired, I stood before

My feeble work, and slowly gazed it o'er.

As well as I knew how my time I'd spent;

Within me rose a feeling of content;

And so, though rude the work and bleak the scene,

Peace filled my heart where once despair had been.

"my Lord and Master stood within."

Then knelt I on the sward, and thanks to God

I gave; but as I raised me from the sod,

I heard again the angel's ringing voice,

But now more soft and kind.  He cried "Rejoice,

O Man!  and see how God hath blessed thy pain."

I turned, and there before my vision plain

Now rose a temple where my hut had been;

And lo, my Lord and Master stood within.

          Please excuse the old fashioned spelling, grammar, and pacing.  I copied it exactly from the book.

          I hope to use what God has, and will, give me and do the best I can with it.  Maybe, with His blessing, it will become something beautiful and wonderful that will be an asset and not a blight to the world.