ONLY yesterday it was morning And the spring put forth its leaves; We have lived; and the summer is warning Us to bring in our sheaves; And to all of us comes one thought As we look to the westering sun, -- How little of all we have wrought Was by our own hands done. We have sown the homelands over With the ancient seed of the home; Broad acres of wheat and of clover Laugh again to the sun from the loam; But our joy as we go reaping In the green field and the gold Is to find the new harvest keeping The color and weight of the old. We remember the forms and the faces Round our youth like an aureole; We remember the virtues and graces That gave us heart and soul; But the crowning joy that we cherish, The source and the stay of our powers, Is to feel in our lives that perish The work of their hands in ours. Through times and seasons flying We have found one thing stand sure, One truth, among all things dying, The years leave more secure; Only what is spent in giving Escapes from wealth's decay, Only what is built into living Never passes away. Of the dust are man's creations; Both dome and tower shall fall; Dark lies on its foundations The roof-tree of our hall; But the homes the soul builds fasting Of truth and art and song, Unto the everlasting Mansions of light belong. We carve with last thanksgiving The bare memorial-stone, Where nothing now is living And all but memory flown; With the flower that blooms here never We clasp the long-loved name, But in us it lives forever, The Rose, that was seed and flame. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...STUDY FOR A GEOGRAPHICAL TRAIL; 1. SEATTLE by CLARENCE MAJOR IN THE SUBWAY by LOUIS UNTERMEYER WRITTEN FOR MY SON, AND SPOKEN BY HIM AT HIS FIRST PUTTING ON BREECHES by MARY BARBER THE VANISHING BOAT by EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE THE HOUSE-TOP; A NIGHT PIECE by HERMAN MELVILLE A POET'S FANCIES: 8. THE MODERN POET; A SONG OF DERIVATIONS by ALICE MEYNELL |