At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where -- by death, fools think, imprisoned -- Low lies her who once so loved you whom you loved so, Pity me? Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drive! -- Being -- who? One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph. Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him foreward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, -- fight on fare ever There as here!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WINDING BANKS OF ERNE; OR, THE EMIGRANT'S ADIEU TO HIS BIRTHPLACE by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM THE BLACK RIDERS: 1 by STEPHEN CRANE ARS VICTRIX (IMITATED FROM THEOPHILE GAUTIER) by HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON THE LAWYER'S WAYS by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR MY GARDEN by RALPH WALDO EMERSON THE IRISH PEASANT TO HIS MISTRESS by THOMAS MOORE |