Poems (Hoffman)/Looking Beyond (Thank God there is a future, in whose sweep)

by Martha Lavinia Hoffman

For works with similar titles, see Looking Beyond.

LOOKING BEYOND

Thank God there is a future, in whose sweep
These little troubled streams of time and life
Lose, and forevermore, their song and strife
As in a bottomless and boundless deep.

I would not give the Christian's simple faith
In an existence, endless and complete,
To lay earth's cities, trophies at my feet,
To earn the fame earth's proudest nation hath;

For oh! though life (this life) is dear to me
Full of bright hopes and sweet realities,
Time is a tangle of perplexities
And sadness permeates all things that be.

Who shall restore the lost, the priceless things
That eager seekers search life's pathway for?
Who shall health, guiltlessness and youth restore
Or wealth and grandeur, flown on noiseless wings?

To many, life is like a long regret;
Mistakes and failures, never understood,
Like weeds, choke out the beautiful and good;
Man most remembers when he would forget.

The errors, follies and the crimes that trace
Youth's reckless and misguided wanderings
In hidden hearts have set their deathless stings
And drawn their anguish lines on beauty's face.

And what is life to him whose days are passed
In dire affliction, cursed among his kind,
In youth infirm, in manhood's glory blind,
Spring's promise blighted by cold winter's blast?

And after all, though Fortune's favorite
Long life and happiness and wealth may gain,
In every heart there is a secret pain,
Each life must have its bitter and its sweet.

And when the future generations look
Back to a past that is our present now;
The aching heart and anxious, troubled brow
Will never mar a page of Memory's book.

The troubled, tossing torrent and the tide
Deep and unbroken in its even flow;
Amid the depths of ocean, who shall know
Where brooks are lost and mightiest rivers hide?

What value hath the gem's resplendent ray
More than the common pebble on the beach,
When both are borne beyond our mortal reach
By waves, that none may dare command to stay?

The happiest and most wretched of mankind
Hath naught to boast of, nothing to deplore;
When they who were are counted as no more,
The years roll on and all are left behind.

Life were a dark deceit, a demon's jest,
A falsehood and a cruel mockery
If all its high, sweet promises could be
Only an unsolved problem of the past.

Thank God, there is a future life where we
Shall find the treasures we have lost in this
Nor time, nor tide shall steal away the bliss
That rolls unbroken as a waveless sea;

Where man may start anew with tireless zeal,
Time left behind, Eternity before,
Through endless cycles rising more and more
To understand what Time could not reveal.

Unburdened by this heavy cloak of clay
To scale such heights as mortals may not climb;
To solve at last the enigma page of Time,
Triumphant o'er the despot of decay.

I would not give the Christian's weakest trust
That grasps the future life for which we long
For all the hopes so ardent, high and strong,
Of this weak life that crumbles into dust.