MY SPIRIT.
Reading edition
———
BY HENRY MORFORD.
———
Spirit, my own proud spirit!
We may not sleep in dust,
There is a path marked out for us
Of a high and a holy trust;
Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born,
To die as cravens die,
With no proud niche for the wreathed urn,
No record on the sky.
We came up life together,
We have lived but a few short years,
We have tasted well at the fountain head
Of human hopes and fears;
Yet life is young, shall we not be so?
Shall we not drink and sing
Of the many glorious hopes that flow
From many a hidden spring?
Ay, and the streams shall gather
In a broad and open sea,
The laving of whose crystal tide
Is immortality;
There shall be a time when we shall rest,
Some gentle summer even,
With a calm content, upon its breast,
And an opening view of heaven.
Storms will be wild around us
Before that time shall come,
And the thunder of blame will fill the air,
And the voice of praise be dumb;
Yet as we draw from the glorious stars
Beauty and light and love,
Hope’s wing shall gild the closing bars
That shut us from above.
Spirit, my own proud spirit,
Thou wilt not fail me now,
Thy hands shall wreathe the chaplet well
And place it on my brow;
Spirit, tried spirit, we were not born
To die as cravens die,
With no proud niche for the wreathed urn,
No record on the sky.