So, let us turn to the unfinished task
That earth demands, strive for one hour to keep
A watch with God, nor watching fall asleep,
Before immortal destinies we ask.
Before we seek to share
A larger purpose, a sublimer care,
Let us o’ercome the bondage of our fears,
And fit ourselves to bear
The burden of our few and sinful years.
Ere we would claim a right to comprehend
The meaning of the life that has no end
Let us be faithful to our passing hours,
And read their beauty, and that light pursue
Which gives the dawn its rose, the noon its blue,
And tells its secret to the wayside flowers.
Our eyes that roam the heavens are too dim,
Our faithless hearts too cumbered with our cares
To reach that light; but whoso sees and dares
To follow, we must also follow him.
Our heroes have beheld it and our seers,
Who in the darkest hours foretold the dawn.
It flashes on the sword for freedom drawn:
It makes a rainbow of a people’s tears.
The vast, the infinite, no more appal
Him who on homely ways has seen it fall:
He trusts the far, he dowers the unknown
With all the love that Earth has made our own,
And all the beauty that his dreams recall:
For him the loneliest deeps of night it cheers;
It gathers in its fold the countless spheres,
And makes a constant homelight for them all.
A HALT ON THE WAY
A pause, a halt upon the way!
A time for dreaming and recalling;
We bore the burden of the day,
And now the autumn night is falling.
A halt in life! a little while
In which to be but a beholder,
And think not of the coming mile
And feel not, “I am growing older.”
A stern old man with wrinkled brow,
Urging us on with beckoning finger,
Time seems no longer—rather now
A sweetheart who would make us linger.
Old times are with us,—long ago;
Upon the wall familiar shadows;
We find again the haunts we know,
The pleasant pathways through the meadows.
And as we turn and look ahead,
Seeking beyond for things departed,
And dream of pathways we must tread
In days to come through lands uncharted,
Old faiths still light us on our way,
Old love and laughter, hope and sorrow,—
As evening of the Northern day
Becomes the morning of to-morrow.