HAPPY the man who yet may hope to rise Above the sea of error which assails him:— Still for the moment's need no man is wise, And, wisdom found, the chance to use it fails him. But let not any mood of trouble seize And mar this hour's fair gift for our possessing: See how the homesteads, haloed by the trees, Glimmer transfigured with the sun's last blessing. Soft grows the light. Outlived now is the day; The sun speeds hence, elsewhere earth's life renewing. Oh, will no wings uplift me that I may Strive on and after, in his track pursuing, See in the eternal sunset's gleam On that still world below me sleeping, The summits burn, the valleys dream, The silver brook all golden onward sweeping! By dark ravines or rugged mountain-steep That god-like flight should not for me be bounded Till opened out, by glowing bays surrounded, On my astonished gaze, the boundless deep. And though the sun at last seem fading, sinking, 'Tis a new race begins—the eternal light My thirsty soul would evermore be drinking, Day still before me, and behind me night, Waves underneath me, heaven's blue dominion Far overhead. Fair dream, swift vanishing! Ah! not so easily the soul's light wing Can mate itself with any earth-born pinion. But still in every man is born that yearning Onward and upward evermore to rise When overhead the lark his song is learning, Lost in the azure spaces of the skies; When, wide upon the air his wings extending, The eagle sweeps above the pine-clad height, And far across the lakes and levels wending, The crane unresting fares in homeward flight. |