Go up to yonder cot,
You will find a little child
With face against the pane,
Who looks towards the beach,
And looking, sees it not.
She will never watch again!
Never watch and weep at night!
For those pretty, saintly eyes
Look beyond the stormy skies,
And there see the beacon light.
The autumn time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom
The low sun fainter shines.
The aster flower is failing,
The harpel's gold is paleing,
Yet overhead, more near
The eternal stars appear.
And present gratitude
Insures the future's good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;
That in the paths untrod,
And the long days of God,
My feet shall still be led,
My heart be comforted.
O, living friends who love me!
dear ones gone before me! Careless of other fame,
I leave to you my name;
Hide it from idle praise,
Save it from idle phrase.
Why, when dear lips that spake it
Are dumb, should strangers wake it?
Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.
Not by the page word painted,
Let life be banned or sainted;
Deeper than written scroll
The colors of the soul;
Sweeter than any sung,
My songs that found no tongue;
Nobler than any fact,
My wish that failed of act.
Others shall sing the song,
Others shall right the wrong,
Finish what I begin,
And all I fail of win.
What matter, I or they,
Mine or another's day,
So the right word be said,
And life the sweeter made.
Hail to the coming singers!
Hail to the brave light bringers!
Forward I reach, and share
All that they sing and dare.
The airs of heaven blow o'er me,
A glory shines before me
Of what mankind shall be,
Pure, generous, brave and free;
A dream of man and woman
Solving the riddle old,
Shaping the age of gold.
The love of God and neighbor,
And equal-handed labor;
The richer life, where beauty
Walks hand in hand with duty.
Ring bells, in unreared steeples,
The joy of unborn people;
Sound trumpets, far off blown,
Your triumph is my own.
Parcel and part of all,
I keep festival,
To reach the good to be
And share the victory.
I feel the earth move sunward,
I join the great march onward,
And take by faith, while living,
My freehold of thanksgiving.
A GREAT SECRET.
My friend, hear a secret,
By which you may thrive,
I am fifty years old,
And my wife's forty-five.
A queen among beauties,
The wedding guests said, When we went to the church
With the priest, and were wed. That's thirty long years past, And I can avow
She was no more a beauty
To me then, than now.
For never the scathe of a
Petulant frown
Has ploughed with its furrows
Her young roses down.
And still like a girl, when
Her praises I speak,
Her heart fairly blushes
Itself through her cheek.
Her heart is more tender
For being less bright;
And the little bit powder
That makes her hair white,
And all the soft patience
There lived in France, in days not long since dead,
A farmer's sons, twin brothers, like in face,
And one was taken in the others stead,
For a small theft, and sentenced in disgrace
To serve for years, a hated galley slave,
Yet said no word, his prized good name to save.
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