Outliving all the hopes my youth confessed,
Still toiling on, still vainly seeking rest,
A world-worn stone that never gathered moss,
Not worn enough to wear away the dross;
Unmoved by love or hate, delight or fear,
Too sad to laugh, too careless for a tear;
I deemed myself the cynic that I seemed,
And passionless as though I slept and dreamed.
But music reawakened in my mind
Emotions I forgot had been confined,
Revived the kindliness of faded youth,
And taught my old deceits an older truth.
Among a crowd of working poor one night
That filled a hall with easily won delight,
I listened, with ungratified disdain,
To song and speech and song and speech again;
At last succeeding some dull-souled harangue,
A maiden sang, and made me glad she sang.
Of all new memories that is most dear;
Like some fresh bird-voice in the dying year,
The tones recalled the voice of one I knew
When Time's white wintry rime was summer dew
And e'en the vision of the girl's clear eyes
Recalled the dreams I once thought destinies.
Like spirit lures her Beauty and her Song
Ruled each a sense and led my soul along,
While Reverence for the higher Wisdom sprang
To second birth within me as she sang:
Lovely flowers oft grow among wild weeds
Unmarked in living and unmissed in dying;
Lovely flowers, unminded, though man needs
A Heaven of beauty to assuage his sighing.
Lovely lives in lowliness are spent
And no man spares a thought about the spending;
Lovely ones, though man be negligent,
Live on, work on, God's wish awaits your tending!
Consciousness of having done its part
Without a wasted moment's indecision,
Sweetly solaces the weary heart
That waits the waking from this worldly vision.
Little monuments of duty done
Are raised by many labourers unregarded;
Brighter crowns in heaven are surely won
By those whose work on earth is unrewarded.
Thus closed the little lay she sang so well,
Thus closes all of her I have to tell;
I never saw her more, but there's a place
Within my heart all brightened by her face,
And so I write these lines to her sweet grace.
Still toiling on, still vainly seeking rest,
A world-worn stone that never gathered moss,
Not worn enough to wear away the dross;
Unmoved by love or hate, delight or fear,
Too sad to laugh, too careless for a tear;
I deemed myself the cynic that I seemed,
And passionless as though I slept and dreamed.
But music reawakened in my mind
Emotions I forgot had been confined,
Revived the kindliness of faded youth,
And taught my old deceits an older truth.
Among a crowd of working poor one night
That filled a hall with easily won delight,
I listened, with ungratified disdain,
To song and speech and song and speech again;
At last succeeding some dull-souled harangue,
A maiden sang, and made me glad she sang.
Of all new memories that is most dear;
Like some fresh bird-voice in the dying year,
The tones recalled the voice of one I knew
When Time's white wintry rime was summer dew
And e'en the vision of the girl's clear eyes
Recalled the dreams I once thought destinies.
Like spirit lures her Beauty and her Song
Ruled each a sense and led my soul along,
While Reverence for the higher Wisdom sprang
To second birth within me as she sang:
Lovely flowers oft grow among wild weeds
Unmarked in living and unmissed in dying;
Lovely flowers, unminded, though man needs
A Heaven of beauty to assuage his sighing.
Lovely lives in lowliness are spent
And no man spares a thought about the spending;
Lovely ones, though man be negligent,
Live on, work on, God's wish awaits your tending!
Consciousness of having done its part
Without a wasted moment's indecision,
Sweetly solaces the weary heart
That waits the waking from this worldly vision.
Little monuments of duty done
Are raised by many labourers unregarded;
Brighter crowns in heaven are surely won
By those whose work on earth is unrewarded.
Thus closed the little lay she sang so well,
Thus closes all of her I have to tell;
I never saw her more, but there's a place
Within my heart all brightened by her face,
And so I write these lines to her sweet grace.