| |
| EVER, as sinks the day on sea or land, | |
| Called or uncalled you take your kindred posts. | |
| At helm and lever, wheel and switch you stand, | |
| On the world’s wastes and melancholy coasts. | |
| Strength to the patient hand! | 5 |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| Now roars the wrenching train along the dark: | |
| How many watchers guard the barren way, | |
| In signal-towers, at stammering keys, to mark | 10 |
| What word the whispering horizons say! | |
| To all that see and hark,— | |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| On ruthless streets, on by-ways sad with sin, | 15 |
| (Half hated by the blinded ones you guard) | |
| Guard well, lest crime unheeded enter in! | |
| The dark is cruel and the vigil hard. | |
| The hours of guilt begin. | |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | 20 |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| Now reels the pulsing hull adown the sea: | |
| Gaze onward, anxious eyes, to mist or star! | |
| Where foams the heaving highway wide and free? | |
| Where wait the reef, the berg, the cape, the bar? | 25 |
| Whatever menace be, | |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| Now the surf-rumble rides the midnight wind, | |
| And grave patrols are at the ocean-edge. | 30 |
| Now soars the rocket where the billows grind, | |
| Discerned too late, on sunken shoal or ledge. | |
| To all that seek and find,— | |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | 35 |
| |
| On lonely headlands gleam the lamps that warn, | |
| Star-steady, or a-blink like dragon-eyes. | |
| Govern your rays, or wake the giant horn | |
| Within the fog that welds the sea and skies! | |
| Far distant runs the morn: | 40 |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| Now glow the lesser lamps in rooms of pain, | |
| Where nurse and doctor watch the joyless breath, | |
| Drawn in a sigh, and sighing lost again. | 45 |
| Who waits without the threshhold, Life or Death? | |
| Reckon you loss or gain? | |
| To all, alert and faithful in the night, | |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
| Honor to you that guard our welfare now! | 50 |
| To you that constant in the past have stood! | |
| To you by whom the future shall avow | |
| Unconquerable fortitude and good! | |
| Upon the sleepless brow | |
| Of each, alert and faithful in the night, | 55 |
| May there be Light! | |
| |
