( " O mon enfant, tu vois, je me soumets. " )

My child, thou seest, I am content to wait.
So be thou too; with calm secluded mind:
Happy? ah no! nor e'er with hope elate, —
But still resigned!

Be humbly good, and lift a blameless brow.
As morning pours the sunlight in the skies,
Suffer, my child, thy sunnier spirit glow
Through azure eyes!

Victorious, happy, is none in this world's strife.
Time unto all a fickle lord doth prove;
And Time's a shadow, and, child, our little life
Is made thereof.

All men, alas! grow weary by the way.
For to be happy — O fate unkind! — to all
All's lacking. And, though all were granted, say
What thing so small!

And yet this little thing with anxious care
Is sought for ceaselessly, by good and vile:
A little gold, a word, a name to wear,
A loving smile!

The mightiest king o'er love and joy is powerless;
Vast deserts yearn for but one drop of rain.
Man is a well spring brims, till summer, showerless,
Makes void again.

Behold these kings of thought we divinize, —
These heroes, brows transcendent over night,
Names at whose clarion-sound most sombre skies
Flash lightning-bright!

When once they have fulfilled their glorious doom,
Earth for awhile a little brighter made,
They find, for all reward, within the tomb
A little shade.

Kind heaven, that knows our struggles and our sorrows,
Hath pity on our days, sonorous, vain,
Bathing with tears bright dawn of all our morrows
Whose noon is pain.

God lightens aye the path whereon we go;
Still what He is, what we are, brings to mind;
One law revealed in all things here below,
As in mankind!

That steadfast law, bright-stablished above,
On every soul its heavenly beams lets fall: —
Hate nothing, O my child, but all things love,
Or pity all!