HOPE
PROGRESS, OPTIMISM, ENTHUSIASM
THE PROMISED LAND—TO-MORROW
High hopes that burned like stars sublime
Go down the heavens of freedom,
And true hearts perish in the time
We bitterliest need them;
But never sit we down and say,
There's nothing left but sorrow—
We walk the wilderness to-day,
The Promised Land to-morrow.
Our birds of song are silent now,
There are no flowers blooming,
But life beats in the frozen bough
And freedom's spring is coming.
And freedom's tide comes up alway
Though we may stand in sorrow;
And our good bark, aground to-day,
Shall float again to-morrow.
Though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes
With shining futures glisten;
Lo! now the dawn bursts up the skies:
Lean out your souls and listen!
The earth rolls freedom's radiant way,
And ripens with her sorrow;
And 'tis the martyrdom to-day
Brings victory to-morrow.
Through all the long night of the years
The people's cry ascended;
The earth was wet with blood and tears
Ere their meek sufferings ended.
The few shall not forever sway,
The many toil in sorrow,
The bars of hell are strong to-day
But Christ shall rise to-morrow.
'Tis weary watching wave on wave,
But still the tide heaves onward;
We climb like corals, grave on grave,
But build a pathway sunward;
We're beaten back in many a fray,
But strength divine will borrow—
And where our vanguard rests to-day
Our rear shall march to-morrow.
Then, Youth! flame-earnest, still aspire;
With energies immortal,
To many a haven of desire
Your yearning opes a portal.
And though age wearies by the way,
And hearts break in the furrow,
We sow the golden grain to-day—
The harvest comes to-morrow.
—Gerald Massey.
———
THE RIGHT MUST WIN
O it is hard to work for God,
To rise and take his part
Upon this battle-field of earth,
And not sometimes lose heart!
He hides himself so wondrously,
As though there were no God;
He is least seen when all the powers
Of ill are most abroad.
Or He deserts us at the hour
The fight is all but lost;
And seems to leave us to ourselves
Just when we need him most.
Yes, there is less to try our faith,
In our mysterious creed,
Than in the godless look of earth
In these our hours of need.
Ill masters good, good seems to change
To ill with greatest ease;
And, worst of all, the good with good
Is at cross purposes.
It is not so, but so it looks,
And we lose courage then;
And doubts will come if God hath kept
His promises to men.
Ah! God is other than we think;
His ways are far above;
Far beyond reason's height, and reached
Only by childlike love.
The look, the fashion, of God's ways
Love's lifelong study are;
She can be bold, and guess, and act
She has a prudence of her own;
Her step is firm and free.
Yet there is cautious science, too
In her simplicity.
Workman of God! oh, lose not heart,
But learn what God is like,
And in the darkest battle-field,
Thou shalt know where to strike.
Thrice blest is he to whom is given
The instinct that can tell
That God is on the field when he
Is most invisible.
Blest, too, is he who can divine
Where real right doth lie,
And dares to take the side that seems
Wrong to man's blindfold eye.
Then learn to scorn the praise of men
And learn to lose with God;
For Jesus won the world through shame
And beckons thee his road.
God's glory is a wondrous thing,
Most strange in all its ways,
And, of all things on earth, least like
What men agree to praise.
God's justice is a bed where we
Our anxious hearts may lay,
And, weary with ourselves, may sleep
Our discontent away.
For right is right, since God is God,
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin.
—Frederick William Faber.
———
Let us believe
That there is hope for all the hearts that grieve;
That somewhere night
Drifts to a morning beautiful with light,
And that the wrong
Though now it triumphs, wields no scepter long.
But right will reign
Throned where the waves of error beat in vain.
—Frank L. Stanton.
———
To change and change is life; to move and never rest;
Not what we are, but what we hope, is best.
—James Russell Lowell.
———
HAVE HOPE
Have Hope! it is the brightest star
That lights life's pathway down:
A richer, purer gem than decks
An Eastern monarch's crown.
The Midas that may turn to joy
The grief-fount of the soul;
That paints the prize and bids thee press
With fervor to the goal.
Have Hope! as the tossed mariner
Upon the wild sea driven
With rapture hails the polar star—
His guiding light to haven—
So Hope shall gladden thee, and guide
Along life's stormy road,
And as a sacred beacon stand
To point thee to thy God.
—B. A. G. Fuller.
———
WAITING
Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind or tide or sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For, lo! my own shall come to me.
I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.
Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.
What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown
And garner up its fruit of tears.
The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good, with equal law,
Unto the soul of pure delight.
The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time nor space, nor deep nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.
—John Burroughs.
———
THE LARGER HOPE
O, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shriveled in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last—far off—at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream; but what am I?
An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
. . . . . . .
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope through darkness up to God.
I stretch lame hands of faith and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
—Alfred Tennyson.
———
DESPONDENCY REBUKED
Say not, the struggle naught availeth;
The labor and the wounds are vain;
The enemy faints not, nor faileth;
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be—in yon smoke concealed—
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes, silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow—how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!
—Arthur Hugh Clough.
———
COMMIT THY WAY
Commit thy way to God,
The weight which makes thee faint;
Worlds are to him no load,
To him breathe thy complaint.
He who for winds and clouds
Maketh a pathway free,
Through wastes or hostile crowds,
Can make a way for thee.
Thou must in him be blest
Ere bliss can be secure;
On his works must thou rest
If thy work shall endure.
To anxious, prying thought,
And weary, fretting care,
The highest yieldeth naught:
He giveth all to prayer.
Father, thy faithful love,
Thy mercy, wise and mild,
Sees what will blessing prove,
Or what will hurt thy child;
And what thy wise foreseeing
Doth for thy children choose
Thou bringest into being,
Nor sufferest them to lose.
Hope, then, though woes be doubled;
Hope and be undismayed;
Let not thy heart be troubled,
Nor let it be afraid.
This prison where thou art—
Thy God will break it soon,
And flood with light thy heart
In his own blessed noon.
Up! up! the day is breaking;
Say to thy cares, Good night!
Thy troubles from thee shaking
Like dreams in day's fresh light.
Thou wearest not the crown,
Nor the best course can tell;
God sitteth on the throne
And guideth all things well.
—Paul Gerhardt, tr. by Elizabeth Rundle Charles.
———
THE SILVER LINING
There's never a day so sunny
But a little cloud appears,
There's never a life so happy
But has its time of tears;
Yet the sun shines out the brighter
Whenever the tempest clears.
There's never a garden growing
With roses in every plot;
There's never a heart so hardened
But has one tender spot;
We have only to prune the border
To find the forget-me-not.
There's never a sun that rises
But we know 'twill set at night;
The tints that gleam in the morning
At evening are just as bright;
And the hour that is the sweetest
Is between the dark and light.
There is never a cup so pleasant
But has bitter with the sweet;
There is never a path so rugged,
Bearing not the print of feet,
But we have a helper furnished
For the trials we may meet.
There is never a way so narrow
But the entrance is made straight,
There is always a guide to point us
To the "little wicket gate."
And the angels will be nearest
To a soul that's desolate.
There is never a heart so haughty
But will some day bow and kneel;
There is never a heart so wounded
That the Saviour cannot heal;
There is many a lowly forehead
Bearing now the hidden seal.
There's never a dream so happy
But the waking makes us sad;
There's never a dream of sorrow
But the waking makes us glad;
We shall look some day with wonder
At the troubles we have had.
———
Yet sometimes glimmers on my sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man.
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
FARTHER ON
I hear it singing, singing sweetly,
Softly in an undertone,
Singing as if God had taught it,
"It is better farther on!"
Night and day it sings the song,
Sings it while I sit alone,
Sings so that the heart may hear it,
"It is better farther on!"
Sits upon the grave and sings it,
Sings it when the heart would groan,
Sings it when the shadows darken,
"It is better farther on!"
Farther on? How much farther?
Count the milestones one by one?
No! no counting—only trusting,
"It is better farther on!"
———
NEW EVERY MORNING
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every morn is the world made new;
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you—
A hope for me and a hope for you.
All the past things are past and over,
The tasks are done and the tears are shed;
Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.
Yesterday is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf which God holds tight;
With glad days, and sad days, and bad days, which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.
Let them go, since we cannot relieve them;
Cannot undo, and cannot atone;
God in his mercy, receive, forgive them!
Only the new days are our own.
To-day is ours, and to-day alone.
Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all reborn;
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun, and to share with the morn
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.
Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of all sorrow and old sinning,
And puzzle forecasted, and possible pain,
Take heart with the day, and begin again.
—Susan Coolidge.
———
CHEER UP
Never go gloomily, man with a mind;
Hope is a better companion than fear;
Providence, ever benignant and kind,
Gives with a smile what you take with a tear.
All will be right; look to the light;
Morning is ever the daughter of night;
All that was black will be all that is bright;
Cheerily, cheerily, then, cheer up.
Many a foe is a friend in disguise,
Many a sorrow a blessing most true,
Helping the heart to be happy and wise,
Bringing true love and joys ever new.
Stand in the van; strive like a man;
This is the bravest and cleverest plan—
Trusting in God while you do what you can,
Cheerily, cheerily, then, cheer up.
———
PROGRESS
Idly as thou, in that old day
Thou mournest, did thy sire repine;
So, in his time, thy child grown gray
Shall sigh for thine.
But life shall on and upward go;
Th' eternal step of Progress beats
To that great anthem, calm and slow,
Which God repeats.
Take heart! The Waster builds again;
A charmèd life old Goodness hath;
The tares may perish, but the grain
Is not for death.
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
THE VEILED FUTURE
Veiled the future comes, refusing,
To be seen, like Isaac's bride
Whom the lonely man met musing
In the fields at eventide.
Round him o'er the darkening waste
Deeper shades of evening fall,
And behind him in the past
Mother Sarah's funeral.
Mother Sarah being dead,
There comes his veilèd destiny;
The veiled Rebecca he must wed
Whatsoe'er her features be.
On he walks in silent prayer,
Bids the veiled Rebecca hail,
Doubting not she will prove fair
When at length she drops the veil.
When the veil is dropped aside,
Dropped in Mother Sarah's tent,
Oh! she is right fair, this bride
Whom his loving God has sent.
To those walking 'twixt the two—
'Twixt the past with pleasures dead
And the future veiled from view—
The veiled future thou must wed;
Walk like Isaac, praying God;
Walk by faith and not by sight;
And though darker grows the road
Doubt not all will yet come right.
Things behind forgetting, hail
Every future from above.
Doubt not when it drops the veil
'Twill be such as thou wouldst love.
Till at death-eve, when the past
Rings dear Mother Earth's own knells,
Bridal heaven unveils at last
With a peal of marriage bells.
—William Robertson.
———
The night is mother of the day,
The winter of the spring;
And ever upon old decay
The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the starlight lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all his works,
Has left his hope with all.
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
IMAGINARY EVILS
Let to-morrow take care of to-morrow;
Leave things of the future to fate;
What's the use to anticipate sorrow?
Life's troubles come never too late!
If to hope overmuch be an error,
'Tis one that the wise have preferred;
And how often have hearts been in terror
Of evils that never occurred.
Have faith, and thy faith shall sustain thee;
Permit not suspicion and care
With invisible bonds to acclaim thee,
But bear what God gives thee to bear.
By his spirit supported and gladdened,
Be ne'er by forebodings deterred;
But think how oft hearts have been saddened
By fear of what never occurred.
Let to-morrow take care of to-morrow;
Short and dark as our life may appear
We may make it still darker by sorrow,
Still shorter by folly and fear!
Half our troubles are half our invention,
And often from blessings conferred
Have we shrunk, in the wild apprehension
Of evils that never occurred.
—Charles Swain.
———
THE MORNING STAR
There is a morning star, my soul!
There is a morning star;
'Twill soon be near and bright, my soul,
Though now it seem so dim and far.
And when time's stars have come and gone,
And every mist of earth has flown,
That better star shall rise
On this world's clouded skies
To shine forever!
The night is well-nigh spent, my soul!
The night is well-nigh spent;
And soon above our heads shall rise
A glorious firmament.
A sky all clear and glad and bright,
The Lamb once slain its perfect light,
A star without a cloud,
Whose light no mists enshroud,
Descending never!
———
THREE LESSONS
There are three lessons I would write—
Three words as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light,
Upon the hearts of men.
Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow—
No night but hath its morn.
Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven—
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth—
Know this: God rules the host of heaven,
The inhabitants of earth.
Have Love. Not love alone for one,
But man as man thy brother call;
And scatter like the circling sun
Thy charities on all.
Thus grave these lessons on thy soul—
Faith, Hope, and Love—and thou shalt find
Strength when life's surges rudest roll,
Light when thou else wert blind.
—Johann Christopher Friedrich von Schiller.
———
Knowing this, that never yet
Share of truth was vainly set
In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
Yet I argue not
Against Thy hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward.
—John Milton.
———
The world is growing better,
No matter what they say;
The light is shining brighter
In one refulgent ray;
And though deceivers murmur,
And turn another way,
Yet still the world grows better
And better every day.
———
Never give up! it is wiser and better
Always to hope than once to despair;
Fling off the load of Doubt's cankering fetter,
And break the dark spell of tyrannical care;
Never give up, or the burden may sink you—
Providence kindly has mingled the cup;
And in all trials and troubles bethink you
The watchword of life must be—Never give up.
———
It's wiser being good than bad;
It's safer being meek than fierce;
It's fitter being sane than mad.
My own hope is a sun will pierce
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;
That, after Last, returns the First,
Though a wide compass round be fetched;
That what began best, can't end worst,
Nor what God blest once, prove accurst.
—Robert Browning.
———
Hope, Christian soul! in every stage
Of this thine earthly pilgrimage,
Let heavenly joy thy thoughts engage;
Abound in hope.
Hope through the watches of the night;
Hope till the morrow brings the light;
Hope till thy faith be lost in sight;
Abound in hope.
———
God works in all things; all obey
His first propulsion from the night;
Wake thou and watch! the world is gray
With morning light.
—John Greenleaf Whittier.
———
When the sun of joy is hidden,
And the sky is overcast,
Just remember—light is coming,
And the storm won't always last.
———
The mist denies the mountains;
The wind forbids the sea;
But, mist or wind, I go to find
The day that calls to me.
For there are mornings yonder
And noons that call and call;
And there's a day with arms outheld,
That waits beyond them all.
—Josephine Preston Peabody.
———
Open the door of your hearts, my lads,
To the angel of Love and Truth
When the world is full of unnumbered joys,
In the beautiful dawn of youth.
Casting aside all things that mar,
Saying to wrong, Depart!
To the voices of hope that are calling you
Open the door of your heart.
—Edward Everett Hale.
———
A little bit of hope
Makes a rainy day look gay;
A little bit of charity
Makes glad a weary way!
———
Hope, child, to-morrow, and to-morrow still,
And every morrow hope; trust while you live.
Hope! each time the dawn doth heaven fill,
Be there to ask as God is there to give.
—Victor Hugo.