Greetings from Longfellow

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Anne Storer, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
Sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! We know what Master laid thy keel, What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, ’T is of the wave and not the rock; ’T is but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest’s roar, In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant o’er our fears, Are all with thee—are all with thee!
Labor with what zeal we will, Something still remains undone, Something uncompleted still Waits the rising of the sun.
By the bedside, on the stair, At the threshold, near the gates, With its menace or its prayer, Like a mendicant it waits;
Waits, and will not go away; Waits, and will not be gainsaid; By the cares of yesterday Each to-day is heavier made;
Till at length the burden seems Greater than our strength can bear, Heavy as the weight of dreams, Pressing on us everywhere.
And we stand from day to day, Like the dwarfs of times gone by, Who, as Northern legends say, On their shoulders held the sky.
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day’s events, That with the hour begin and end, Our pleasures and our discontents, Are rounds by which we may ascend.
We have not wings, we cannot soar; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time.