Classic Poem

The earth is loud with discontentments muttered
By foolish mouths — the selfish and the vain;
And yet a world of agony unuttered
Lies behind lips that never tell their pain.

The voiceless dark is loaded with repentance,
In solemn courts of midnight, where, o'ercast
With sorrow, Conscience looks its silent sentence
Against the culprit actions of the past.

And countless eyes, aglaze with hot reflections,
Stare down the highway which their feet have known,
Where stand afar the ghostly recollections,
Like frowning statues not to be o'erthrown.

While fancy sees them rise in retributions,
A spectre file along the future way,
To blight the hopes and chill the resolutions
Which Night should marshal for the coming day.

Oh, ye who cower or tremble at the errors
Rebuking Memory conjures where you wait,
Rise, and against the past with all its terrors,
With hand indignant, swing the iron gate!

Rise in the Golden Now, and ope its portal,
That doorway which to-morrow never opes —
Worthy your manhood and your soul immortal,
Go forward to the harvest of your hopes.

Nor let the future mantle of December
Become a coward's sackcloth, ashen gray,
To doom your aged anguish to remember
The precious chances you refuse to-day.

What's done is done — let errors past recalling
In gulfy waters of oblivion drown;
The fret of retrospection, hot and galling,
Wilts to the root the flower of courage down,

Until despair half makes the soul contented
To sit reluctant at the yet untried;
Perpetual brooding over what's repented
Is but the drug of constant suicide.

Such sorrow is a winter owl, foreboding
For future wildernesses nights of care,
While cheerful thoughts are happy song-birds, loading
With May-time music all the summer air.

The vain regrets we nurture in our bosoms
Are deadly nightshades, which we feed with tears;
But all the heart becomes a bed of blossoms,
When hope is jocund and contentment cheers.

Shake from your feet the dust with wholesome scorning
Against the ugly, ne'er-to-be undone!
From out the cloudy darkness, like the morning,
With glowing brow go forth into the sun,

And to the duty nearest, most defiant,
With steadfast courage, lay your shouldered strength,
And conquering more than cities, like a giant.
Arise the master of yourself at length.

Prophetic hopes shall lead you to new pleasures,
Along the yielding pathway of the plough,
To yellow harvests and to orchard treasures,
The fruit of action in the Golden Now.

And when the tranquil evening crowns your labor
With sheaves, and fruits, and welcome household songs.
At peace with Heaven, your conscience, and your neighbor,
Resign your prayerful heart where it belongs.