Past and Future

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.

What were we? What was that bitter instant We called life?

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm.

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!

The world is weary of the past, Oh, might it die or rest at last!

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

The “good old times”—all times when old are good— Are gone.

The best of prophets of the future is the past.

And heard Troy doubted; time will doubt of Rome.

Turn away no more. Why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor, The wat’ry shore Is giv’n thee till the break of day.

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future sees, Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walk’d among the ancient trees.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

What shall I do to be forever known, And make the age to come my own?

The never-ending flight Of future days.

The sun… In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold.

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind. 2

Yesternight the sun went hence, And yet is here today.

What’s past is prologue.

What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d, And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d, And peace proclaims olives of endless age.

The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil’d, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.