Are you a tender human being?

Do you resonate

To other souls in jeopardy

From ignorance and hate?

 

Do you in pity smile askance

At the brainless brute

Whose gumption drives him heartlessly

To trample and to loot?

 

Do you remain gently confident

That brutishness is brittle,

And most degrades the brute himself

From manna to spittle?

 

Then keep that tenderness alive,

For nothing but tenderness

May nurse the seed that gives us back

A Garden from a wilderness.

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