Toward that goal of good That glimmers thro’ the night Above the time and mood, A star of constant light;
At last to meet the dark, The goal not reach’d indeed, But full of hours and work, Are, Exile, not thy creed.
And less to leap to catch The spinning spokes of change; In our brief life to snatch All aspects and to range
Full-face with every view; To sit with those who toil, Great spirits, toiling too; Still less to fan or foil
Those fires that, rushing fast Thro’ all the people’s life, Break roaring round the past In renovating strife.
If in the energic West Man ever grows more large, Like ocean without rest Exploring at the marge,
Here lower yet he turns For ever downward thrust— The baleful Sun-God burns And breaks him into dust;
Or like his native plains Where nothing new appears, Or hath appeared, remains Unchanged a thousand years.
Tho’ sorrows darkly veiled At all men’s tables (nor The guests make question, paled, Nor children hush before
Those presences of grief) Sit, yet to all men due Due rights; the sweet relief Of home; the friendship true;
The dying word; to feel Their country in their keep; To heave along the wheel, And push against the steep.
But in this wilderness, Wed to a rock or two, What joys have we to bless? Far, far, our friends and few;
And thou, O happy Land, We dream of thee in vain— One moment see, then stand Within this waste again.
The great earth in her zones Matureth day by day; But we, like waiting stones, Know time but by decay.
Grief hath a shadow, shame; And manhood, meanly tost In woes without a name And sorrows that are lost,
Look’d at, when in the streets True sorrow, seal’d with sores And wrap’d in rags, entreats A charity from ours,
Manhood can best control; But this dark exile hath Worse wounds, and of the soul— A misery and a wrath.
Happy the man who ploughs All day his native croft; He looks to heaven and knows, Smiling, the lark aloft.
Happy the man whose toil Leads on laborious hills; The rock beneath the soil The measure of his ills.
Happiest, who can go forth Thro’ every age and clime, His home the whole of earth, His heritage all time.
In vasty Wilds and with No crimson petals pranckt The shallow briars breathe And bloom and die unthankt.