Past and Present

There are who hate these stormy years,
    But love the still and quiet Past
Now deem its servers’ long appears
    Are cancelled in quick pangs at last.
The dead are still, for they are dead;
    That Past, are silent in its grave,
Was stern enough when hope and dread
    Their life to its hot grave.

The soul beneath its troubled heart,
    Is all that lives, to man restored;
Its trampling storms are hushed to rest,
    And fools believe they sever roared;
That al our golden harvest grew
    Spontaneous on a thousand hills,
With no rough coulter crushing through
    The stubborn globe Jehovah Hills.

The Poet was noble for it laid
    Foundations of the nobler Now,
Fields in autumnal white arrayed
    Give praise to April’s dauntless plow;
Bright blossoms glorify their germ,
    Though cold and brown in earth it lay;
And beautiful’s the loathed worm
    When winged with gold he soars away.

All life goes onward be complete
    The rounded sphere its jaw ordained —
The ripeness makes the vintage sweet;
    By growth alone its fullness gained.
If we are worthy our true lives,
    The worship of the old time speak;
If base, the primal curse survives
    That burned the first born dastard’s cheek.

Old Wrong though throned and purple clad,
    Is never Right; and better worth
Its naked Truth, alone and sad,
    And hunted through the desert earth.
All things are yearning to be new —
    Philosophies, and Faiths, and Forms;
The life which made old custom true,
    No more its rigid bosom warms.

Poured from their fount beneath God’s throne,
    The everlasting Years proceed;
No backward tide returns the down
    And flowing Ages to our need.
Launched on the wave in vain ye try
    To reach the havens of former rest 
Whole nobler Faith rides grandly by
    To its sublimer future’s quest.

The glorious Present, with its clash
    Of angry Wrong and warring Right,
Is round us like the billows lash,
    That goads us to the final fight.
The eternal Future, calm and grand,
    Beckons across the stormy sea,
A star-crown waving in her hand
    For him who dares be true and free!