- At the midnight in the silence of the
sleep-time,
- When you set your fancies free,
- Will they pass to where—by death, fools think,
imprisoned—
- Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
- —Pity me?
- Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
- What had I on earth to do
- With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
- Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel!
- —Being—who?
- One who never turned his back but marched breast
forward,
- Never doubted clouds would break,
- Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph,
- Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
- Sleep to wake.
- No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s
work-time
- Greet the unseen with a cheer!
- Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
- ‘Strive and thrive!’ cry,
‘Speed,—fight on, fare ever
- There as here!’