My never-failing friends are they, With them I take delight in weal, And while I understand and feel My cheeks have often been bedewed My thoughts are with the Dead; with them Their virtues love, their faults condemn, And from their lessons seek and find My hopes are with the Dead; anon Yet leaving here a name, I trust, Robert Southey [1774-1843] OPPORTUNITY MASTER of human destinies am I! Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait. If sleeping, wake-if feasting, rise before Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate, I answer not, and I return no more! John James Ingalls [1833-1900] OPPORTUNITY THEY do me wrong who say I come no more And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win. Wail not for precious chances passed away! Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast? Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell; Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped, To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb; My judgments seal the dead past with its dead, But never bind a moment yet to come. Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep; Walter Malone [1866 OPPORTUNITY THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:— There spread a cloud of dust along a plain; A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel That blue blade that the king's son bears, but this And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout Edward Rowland Sill [1841-1887] THE ARROW AND THE SONG I SHOT an arrow into the air, I breathed a song into the air, Long, long afterward, in an oak Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [1807-1882] CALUMNY A WHISPER Woke the air, A soft, light tone, and low, Yet barbed with shame and woe. Ah! might it only perish there, Nor farther go! But no! a quick and eager ear Caught up the little, meaning sound; Until it reached a gentle heart That throbbed from all the world apart And that-it broke! It was the only heart it found,— It reached that gentle heart at last, Frances Sargent Osgood [1811-1850] THE EFFECT OF EXAMPLE WE scatter seeds with careless hand, And dream we ne'er shall see them more; But for a thousand years Their fruit appears, In weeds that mar the land, Or healthful shore. The deeds we do, the words we say,- We count them ever past; But they shall last,— In the dread judgment they And we shall meet. I charge thee by the years gone by, In work and play, Lest in that world their cry Of woe thou hear. John Keble [1792-1866] LITTLE AND GREAT A TRAVELER on a dusty road And one took root and sprouted up, And grew into a tree. Love sought its shade at evening-time, To breathe its early vows; And Age was pleased, in heats of noon, The dormouse loved its dangling twigs, The birds sweet music bore It stood a glory in its place, A little spring had lost its way He thought not of the deed he did, Had cooled ten thousand parched tongues, And saved a life beside. A dreamer dropped a random thought; 'Twas old, and yet 'twas new; A simple fancy of the brain, But strong in being true. |