The Leader To Be

What shall the leader be in that great day     When we who sleep and dream that we are slaves     Shall wake and know that Liberty is ours?     Mark well that word - not yours, not mine, but ours.     For through the mingling of the separate streams     Of individual protest and desire,     In one united sea of purpose, lies     The course to Freedom.              When Progression takes     Her undisputed right of way, and sinks     The old traditions and conventions where     They may not rise, what shall the leader be?     No mighty warrior skilled in crafts of war,     Sowing earth's fertile furrows with dead men     And staining crimson God's cerulean sea,     To prove his prowess to a shuddering world.     Nor yet a monarch with a silly crown     Perched on an empty head, an in-bred heir     To senseless titles and anemic blood.     No ruler, purchased by the perjured votes     Of striving demagogues whose god is gold.     Not one of these shall lead to Liberty.     The weakness of the world cries out for strength.     The sorrow of the world cries out for hope.     Its suffering cries for kindness.              He who leads     Must then be strong and hopeful as the dawn     That rises unafraid and full of joy     Above the blackness of the darkest night.     He must be kind to every living thing;     Kind as the Krishna, Buddha and the Christ,     And full of love for all created life.     Oh, not in war shall his great prowess lie,     Nor shall he find his pleasure in the chase.     Too great for slaughter, friend of man and beast,     Touching the borders of the Unseen Realms     And bringing down to earth their mystic fires     To light our troubled pathways, wise and kind     And human to the core, so shall he be,     The coming leader of the coming time.