What I Live For

This is a poem I learned when I was a young boy in the Lyceum, the Spiritualist Sunday School. I have often fallen short of the high ideals it expresses but do try to live in accordance with its principles.


I live for those who love me,
Whose hearts are kind and true;
For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my coming too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the tasks by God assigned me,
For the bright hopes yet to find me,
And the good that I can do.

I live to learn their story,
Who suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory
And follow in their wake.
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The heroics of all ages,
Whose deeds crowd history’s pages
And time’s great volume make.

I live to hold communion,
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union,
Twixt nature’s heart and mine.
To profit by affliction,
Reap truths from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser by conviction
And fulfil God’s grand design.

I live to hail that season,
By gifted ones foretold,
When man shall live by reason
And not alone by gold,
When man to man united
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted,
As Eden was of old.

I live for those who love me,
For those who know me true,
For the heaven that smiles above me,
And awaits my spirit too,
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.


George Linnaeus Banks