Classic Poem

We rest in faith that man's perfection is the crowning flower, towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree is pressing,—seen in puny blossoms now,
But in the world's great morrows to expand with broadest petal and with deepest glow,
The faith that life on earth is being shaped to glorious ends.
Full souls are double mirrors, making still an endless vista of fair things before, repeating things behind.
So faith is strong only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink.
It comes when music stirs us, and the chords, moving on some grand climax, shake our souls with influx new that makes new energies.
It comes in swellings of the heart and tears that rise at noble and at gentle deeds.
At labours of the master-artist's hand, which, trembling, touches to a finer end, trembling before an image seen within.
It comes in moments of heroic love, unjealous joy in joy not made for us—in conscious triumph of the good within, making us worship goodness that rebukes.
Even our failures are a prophecy, even our yearnings and our bitter tears after that fair and true we cannot grasp;
As patriots who seem to die in vain make liberty more sacred by their pangs.
Presentiment of better things on earth sweep in with every force that stirs our souls to admiration.
Self-renouncing love, or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one:
Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night we hear the roll and dash of waves that break nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,
Which rises to the level of the cliff because the wide Atlantic rolls behind, throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs.

We rest in faith that man's perfection is the crowning flower, towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree is pressing—seen in puny blossoms now,
But in the world's great morrows to expand with broadest petal and with deepest glow,
The faith that life on earth is being shaped to glorious ends.
Full souls are double mirrors, making still an endless vista of fair things before, repeating things behind.
So faith is strong only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink.
It comes when music stirs us, and the chords, moving on some grand climax, shake our souls with influx new that makes new energies.
It comes in swellings of the heart and tears that rise at noble and at gentle deeds.
At labors of the master-artist's hand, which, trembling, touches to a finer end, trembling before an image seen within.
It comes in moments of heroic love, unjealous joy in joy not made for us—in conscious triumph of the good within, making us worship goodness that rebukes.
Even our failures are a prophecy, even our yearnings and our bitter tears after that fair and true we cannot grasp;
As patriots who seem to die in vain make liberty more sacred by their pangs.
Presentiment of better things on earth sweep in with every force that stirs our souls to admiration.
Self-renouncing love, or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one:
Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night we hear the roll and dash of waves that break nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,
Which rises to the level of the cliff because the wide Atlantic rolls behind, throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs.