Poems (Hoffman)/Our Better Selves
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OUR BETTER SELVES
Face to face in the light with our better selves
Sometimes for a moment the mind that delves
In the problems written below and on high,
In the flowers of earth and the clouds of the sky,
The enigmas penciled on star and stone—
Stands face to face in the light with its own—
And looks as the stone to the shining star,
To what we might be from what we are.
And we try to dash off memory's shelves
Some volume from sight of our better selves.
Sometimes for a moment the mind that delves
In the problems written below and on high,
In the flowers of earth and the clouds of the sky,
The enigmas penciled on star and stone—
Stands face to face in the light with its own—
And looks as the stone to the shining star,
To what we might be from what we are.
And we try to dash off memory's shelves
Some volume from sight of our better selves.
'Tis then we long for a nobler part;
For a broader mind and a larger heart;
For that better self—how it speaks and shames
Our small deceits and our petty aims,
'Till we sigh to be noble, and good, and true,
And do what our better selves tell us to do.
Turn back from the zigzag path we have trod
To a highway broad as the love of God.
For a broader mind and a larger heart;
For that better self—how it speaks and shames
Our small deceits and our petty aims,
'Till we sigh to be noble, and good, and true,
And do what our better selves tell us to do.
Turn back from the zigzag path we have trod
To a highway broad as the love of God.
We shall stand some time face to face with the past
When the die of our lives is forever cast;
For the soul—the soul—it can never forget—
Will it shudder and sicken in vain regret,
And sigh to return to the sphere of men—
To be, to be, what it might have been?
When the die of our lives is forever cast;
For the soul—the soul—it can never forget—
Will it shudder and sicken in vain regret,
And sigh to return to the sphere of men—
To be, to be, what it might have been?