They may gloat o'er the senseless words they wring From the pangs of thy despair:
They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide
The sun's meridian glow;
The heel of a priest may tread thee down,
And a tyrant work thee woe;
But never a truth has been destroyed:
They may curse it and call it crime;
Pervert and betray, or slander and slay
Its teachers for a time.
But the sunshine aye shall light the sky,
As round and round we run;
And the truth shall ever come uppermost,
And justice shall be done.
And live there now such men as these
With thoughts like the great of old?
Many have died in their misery,
And left their thought untold;
And many live, and are ranked as mad,
And placed in the cold world's ban,
For sending their bright far-seeing souls
Three centuries in the van.
They toil in penury and grief,
Unknown, if not maligned;
Forlorn, forlorn, bearing the scorn
Of the meanest of mankind.
And the genial seasons run,
And ever the truth comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done.
'Tis dark, and shines not in the ray :
'Twas good, no doubt — 't is gone at last
There dawns another day.
Why should we sit where ivies creep,
And shroud ourselves in charnels deep;
Or the world's yesterdays deplore,
Mid crumbling ruins mossy hoar?
Why should we see with dead men's eyes,
Looking at WAS from morn to night,
When the beauteous Now, the divine To BE,
Woo with their charms our living sight?
Why should we hear but echoes dull
When the world of sound, so beautiful,
Will give us music of our own?
Why in the darkness should we grope,
When the sun, in heaven's resplendent cope,
Shines as bright as ever it shone ?
Abraham saw no brighter stars
Than those which burn for thee and me. When Homer heard the lark's sweet song, Or night-bird's lovelier melody,
They were such sounds as Shakspere heard,
Or Chaucer, when he blessed the bird;
Such lovely sounds as we can hear.
Great Plato saw the vernal year
Send forth its tender flowers and shoots,
And luscious autumn pour its fruits;
And we can see the lilies blow,
The corn-fields wave, the rivers flow;
For us all bounties of the earth,
For us its wisdom, love, and mirth,
If we daily walk in the sight of God,
And prize the gifts He has bestowed.
We will not dwell amid the graves,
Nor in dim twilights sit alone,
To gaze at moulder'd architraves,
Or plinths and columns overthrown;
We will not only see the light
Through painted windows cobwebb'd o'er, Nor know the beauty of the night
Save by the moonbeam on the floor:
But in the presence of the sun,
Or moon, or stars, our hearts shall glow ; We'll look at nature face to face,
And we shall LOVE because we KNOW. The present needs us. Every age Bequeaths the next for heritage
No lazy luxury or delight
But strenuous labor for the right;
For Now, the child and sire of Time,
Demands the deeds of earnest men
To make it better than the past,
And stretch the circle of its ken.
Now is a fact that men deplore,
Though it might bless them evermore,
Would they but fashion it aright:
'Tis ever new, 'tis ever bright.
Time, nor Eternity, hath seen
A repetition of delight
In all its phases: ne'er hath been
For men or angels that which is ;
And that which is hath ceased to be Ere we have breathed it, and its place Is lost in the Eternity.
But Now is ever good and fair,
Of the Infinitude the heir,
And we of it. So let us live
That from the Past we may receive
Light for the Now from Now a joy
That Fate nor Time shall e'er destroy.
ALL happy things are earnest. Once I roamed
In England, or in Dreamland, through the streets
Of a huge, buzzing, dense, metropolis.
Slowly, in teeming thoroughfares, I walked,
One of the people, hearing with their ears,
Beholding with their eyes, and in their thought
Divining, till my soul was filled with grief
At all that I beheld, and felt, and knew.
It was a gibing, laughing, sneering crowd,
Devoid of truth, faith, love, and earnestness,
Except a horrid earnestness for gain;
Fierce love of lucre, which, if one had not,
He was despised and trodden down of men :
Which, if one had, he was adored of all,
Placed on a pinnacle to be admired,
Flattered, and filled with other rich men's gifts;
His overflowing fulness made more full,
His vulgarness thought choice gentility,
His vices virtues, and his prejudice
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