Wouldst share a noble life? Then cast
No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask.
Each day will set its proper task.
—Goethe.
Though to-day may not fulfill
All thy hopes, have patience still;
For perchance to-morrow's sun
Sees thy happier day begun.
—P. Gerhardt.
AT THE END OF ALL DESIRE
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter,
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And everything but sleep.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful,
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful,
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea.
—Swinburne.
JUDGE NOT
Judge not! the workings of his brain
And of his heart thou canst not see;
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well won field,
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.
The look, the air, that frets thy sight
May be a token, that below
The soul has closed in deadly fight
With some infernal fiery foe.
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee shuddering on thy face.
The fall thou darest to despise—
May be the angel's slackened hand
Has suffered it, that he may rise
And take a firmer, surer stand;
Or, trusting less to earthly things,
May henceforth learn to use his wings.