What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist.
'ELL me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream~ For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Find us farther than today.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle! Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act, act in the living Present! Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
[From The Tempest.]
FULL fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! now I hear them,-ding-dong, bell.
HE sea! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free! Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth's wide regions round; It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies, Or like a cradled creature lies.
I'm on the sea! I'm on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below, And silence whereso'er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep, What matter? I should ride and sleep.
I love (Oh! how I love) to ride On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide, When every mad wave drowns the moon, Or whistles aloft his tempest tune, And tells how goeth the world below, And why the southwest blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull tame shore, But I loved the great sea more and more, And backwards flew to her billowy breast, Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was and is to me; For I was born on the open sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean child!
I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life,
With wealth to spend, and power to range, But never have sought nor sighed for change; And Death, whenever he come to me,
Shall come on the wide unbounded sea!
BRYAN WALLER PROCTER (Barry Cornwall).
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