FullReads

Ye with heart and vision gifted
To discern and love the right,

Whose worn faces have been lifted
To the slowly-growing light,
Where from Freedom’s sunrise drifted slowly
back the murk of night

Ye who through long years of trial
Still have held your purpose fast,
While a lengthening shade the dial
from the westering sunshine cast,
And of hope each hour’s denial seemed an echo of
the last!

O my brothers! O my sisters
Would to God that ye were near,
Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear;
Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice
I seem to hear!

With the storm above us driving,
With the false earth mined below,
Who shall marvel if thus striving
We have counted friend as foe;
Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for
blow.

Well it may be that our natures
Have grown sterner and more hard,
And the freshness of their features
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,
And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and
rudely jarred.

Be it so. It should not swerve us
From a purpose true and brave;
Dearer Freedom’s rugged service
Than the pastime of the slave;
Better is the storm above it than the quiet of
the grave.

Let us then, uniting, bury
All our idle feuds in dust,
And to future conflicts carry
Mutual faith and common trust;
Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is
most just.

From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,
Voices of our lost ones sounding
Bid us be of heart and cheer,
Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on
the inward ear.

Know we not our dead are looking
Downward with a sad surprise,
All our strife of words rebuking
With their mild and loving eyes?
Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud
their blessed skies?

Let us draw their mantles o’er us
Which have fallen in our way;
Let us do the work before us,
Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is
not day!