Classic Poem

Timid soul! thou art fleeing
False danger: fear not;
For thy sweet self of being
Shall ne'er be forgot.

Man inherits the ages,
And shall, with the whole
Of his grand heritages,
Inherit the soul.

There are times when far places,
Where strangers we roam,
Flash familiar with traces
Of some former home.

There are hours when such trances
Efface all that is
That we dream circumstances
Of past centuries.

There are moments we hear
A dead father's tone
In our voices, so clear
It startles our own.

We are writ in as books
By hands from the skies,
And ghost-ancestry looks
Oft out of our eyes.

These are half-resurrections
Of souls that are gone —
Dim and fitful projections
Of that coming dawn

Of all-consciousness, when
In Man there shall stand
The whole lives of past men,
So livingly scanned,

So remembered, so real,
So self-substantive,
That, no longer ideal,
They truly shall live.

Why is this a hard saying?
Heredity grows,
And the part it is playing
Shall never have close.

As the form and the feature,
The tone and the trait,
The whole self of each creature,
Are so destinate

From the procreant mold,
Shall mind not progress
Till by heirship it hold
All past consciousness?

And, if far-future man
Remember so me,
From the hour I began
Till ceasing to be —

So revive me, so live me,
So breathe my soul's breath —
What is that but to give me
Sure triumph o'er death?

O immortal my soul!
To live and to know
And flow on with the whole
Divine Being's flow!

O my soul! from the dark
Wherein flesh is born
Soar and sing like the lark!
For here is the morn!