The Good Samaritan

Henry B Eyring spoke of the overloaded priesthood holder, referring to the parable of the good Samaritan. This reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Australian poet Henry Lawson:

The Good Samaritan

He comes from out the ages dim—
The good Samaritan;
I somehow never pictured him
A fat and jolly man;
But one who’d little joy to glean,
And little coin to give—
A sad-faced man, and lank and lean,
Who found it hard to live.

His eyes were haggard in the drought,
His hair was iron-grey—
His dusty gown was patched, no doubt,
Where we patch pants today.
His faded turban, too, was torn—
But darned and folded neat,
And leagues of desert sand had worn
The sandals on his feet.

He’d been a fool, perhaps, and would
Have prospered had he tried,
But he was one who never could
Pass by the other side.
An honest man whom men called soft,
While laughing in their sleeves—
No doubt in business ways he oft
Had fallen amongst thieves.

And, I suppose, by track and tent,
And other ancient ways,
He drank, and fought, and loved, and went
The pace in his young days.
And he had known the bitter year
When love and friendship fail—
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear
That he had been in jail.

And if he was a married man,
As many are that roam,
I guess the good Samaritan
Was rather glum at home.
Howbeit—in a study brown—
He had, for all we know,
His own thoughts as he journeyed down
The road to Jericho.

(And so “by chance there came that way”,
It reads not like romance—
The truest friends on earth today,
They mostly come by chance.)
He saw a stranger left by thieves
Sore hurt and like to die—
He also saw (my heart believes)
The others pass him by.

The Good Samaritan by Aimé Morot (1880) shows the Good Samaritan taking the injured man to the inn. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Perhaps that good Samaritan
Knew Levite well, and priest)
He lifted up the wounded man
And sat him on his beast,
And took him on towards the inn—
All Christlike, unawares—
Still pondering, perhaps, on sin
And virtue—and his cares.

He bore him in and fixed him right
(Helped by the local drunk),
And wined and oiled him well at night,
And thought beside his bunk.
And on the morrow ere he went
He left a quid and spoke
Unto the host in terms which meant
“Look after that poor bloke”.

He must have known them at the inn,
They must have known him too—
Perhaps on that same track of sin
He’d seen a sick mate through;
For “whatsoe’r thou spendest more”
(The parable is plain)
“I will repay,” he told the host,
“When I return again.”

It seems he was a good sort, too,
The boss of that old pub—
(As even now there are a few
At shanties in the scrub).
The good Samaritan jogged on
Through Canaan’s dust and heat,
And pondered on the good days gone
Or ways to make ends meet.

(He was no Christian, understand,
For Christ had not been born—
He journeyed later through the land
To hold priests up to scorn;
To tell the world of “certain men”
Like that Samaritan,
And preach the simple creed again—
Man’s duty, man to man!)

“Once upon a time there lived a man”—
But he has lived alway,
And that gaunt, good Samaritan
Is with us here today;
He passed through the city streets
Unnoticed and unknown,
He helps the sinner that he meets—
His sorrows are his own.

He shares his tucker on the track
When things are at their worst
(And often shouts in bars outback
For souls that are athirst).
Today you see him staggering down
The blazing watercourse,
And making for the distant town—
A sick man on his horse.

He’ll live while nations find their graves
And mortals suffer pain—
Though colour rule, and whites be slaves
And savages again.
And, after all is past and done,
He’ll rise up, the Last Man,
From tending to the last but one—
The good Samaritan.

* This page has the poem as it was formatted in print.  Also, if you checked out the Wikipedia article on the parable of the good Samaritan, you may have noticed it refers to this poem.