Farm Legends by Will Carleton

Author:Will Carleton [Carleton, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-01-17T23:00:00+00:00

How much we do not know; have bravely turned

Our guns of eloquence on forest trees,

And preached grave doctrines to the wayward breeze;

When we have done all this, the foggy cloud,

With scarce a rift, is still above us bowed;

And we are children, on some garden's verge,

Groping for flowers the opposing wall beneath,

Who, flushed and breathless, may at last emerge,

With a few scanty blossoms for a wreath.

But never was a cloud so thick and black,

But it might some time break, and on its track

The glorious sun come streaming. Never, too,

So but its threads might bleach to lighter hue,

Was sorrow's mantle of so deep a dye.

And he who, peering at the troubled sky,

Looks past the clouds, or looks the cloud-rifts through,

Or, finding none, remembers their great worth,

And strikes them for himself, is that man who

Shows the completest wisdom of this earth.

When one stands forth in Reason's glorious light,

Stands in his own proud consciousness of right,

Laments his faults, his virtues does not boast,

Studies all creatures—and himself the most—

Knowing the way wherewith his faults to meet,

Or, vanquished by them, owning his defeat,

He pays the penalty as should true men,

And pitches battle with the foe again;

When, giving all their proper due and heed,

He yet has power, when such shall be the need,

To go his way, unshackled, true, and free,

And bid the world go hanged, if needs must be,

He strikes a rift for his unfearing eye

Through the black cloud of low servility:

A cloud that's decked the Orient all these years;

'Neath whose low-bending folds, 'mid groans and tears,

Priestcraft has heaped its huge, ill-gotten gains,

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