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But Heaven, that spreadeth o'er all its blue cope,
Hath given us memory, hath given us hope!
And redeemeth the lot which the present hath cast,
By the fame of the future, the dream of the past.
The future! ah there hath the spirit its home!
In its distance is written the glorious to come.
The great ones of earth lived but half for their way,
The grave was their altar, the far-off their way.
Step by step hath the mind its high empire won;
We live in the sunshine of what it hath done.
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Such music hope brings from the future to still
Humanity vexed with the presence of ill.
The past! ah, we owe it a tenderer debt!
Heaven's own sweetest mercy is not to forget;
Its influence softens the present, and flings
A grace like the ivy, wherever it clings.
Sad thoughts are its ministers—angels that keep
Their beauty to hallow the sorrows they weep.
The wrong, that seemed harsh to our earlier mood,
By long years with somewhat of love is subdued;
The grief that at first had no hope in its gloom,—
Ah, flowers have at length sprung up over the tomb!
The heart hath its twilight, which softens the scene,
While memory recalls where the lovely hath been.
It bends by the red rose, and thinketh old songs;
That leaf to the heart of the lover belongs;
It clothes the green tree with the leaves of its spring,
And brings back the music the lark used to sing.
But spirits yet dearer attend on the past,
When alone 'mid the shadows the dim hearth has cast;
Then feelings come back that had long lost their tone,
And echo the music that once was their own.
Then friends, whose sweet friendship the world could divide,
Come back with kind greetings, and cling to our side.
The book which we loved when our young love was strong;
An old tree long cherished; a nursery song;
A walk slow and pleasant by field and by wood;
The winding 'mid water-plants of that clear flood,
Where lilies, like water-queens, looked on their glass,
That stream we so loved in our childhood to pass.
Oh! world of sweet phantoms, how precious thou art!
The past is perpetual youth to the heart.
