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Concord
“FARTHER horizons every year.” | |
| O tossing pines, which surge and wave | |
| Above the poet’s just made grave, | |
| And waken for his sleeping ear | |
| The music that he loved to hear, | 5 |
| Through summer’s sun and winter’s chill, | |
| With purpose staunch and dauntless will, | |
| Sped by a noble discontent | |
| You climb toward the blue firmament: | |
| Climb as the winds climb, mounting high | 10 |
| The viewless ladders of the sky; | |
| Spurning our lower atmosphere, | |
| Heavy with sighs and dense with night, | |
| And urging upward, year by year, | |
| To ampler air, diviner light. | 15 |
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| “Farther horizons every year.” | |
| Beneath you pass the tribes of men; | |
| Your gracious boughs o’ershadow them. | |
| You hear but do not seem to heed | |
| Their jarring speech, their faulty creed. | 20 |
| Your roots are firmly set in soil | |
| Won from their humming paths of toil; | |
| Content their lives to watch and share, | |
| To serve them, shelter, and upbear, | |
| Yet but to win an upward way | 25 |
| And larger gift of heaven than they, | |
| Benignant view and attitude, | |
| Close knowledge of celestial sign; | |
| Still working for all earthly good, | |
| While pressing on to the Divine. | 30 |
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| “Farther horizons every year.” | |
| So he, by reverent hands just laid | |
| Beneath your layers of waving shade, | |
| Climbed as you climb the upward way, | |
| Knowing not boundary nor stay. | 35 |
| His eyes surcharged with heavenly lights, | |
| His senses steeped in heavenly sights, | |
| His soul attuned to heavenly keys, | |
| How should he pause for rest or ease, | |
| Or turn his wingèd feet again | 40 |
| To share the common feasts of men? | |
| He blessed them with his word and smile | |
| But, still above their fickle moods, | |
| Wooing, constraining him, the while | |
| Beckoned the shining altitudes. | 45 |
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| “Farther horizons every year.” | |
| To what immeasurable height, | |
| What clear irradiance of light, | |
| What far and all-transcendent goal, | |
| Hast thou now risen, O steadfast soul! | 50 |
| We may not follow with our eyes | |
| To where the further pathway lies; | |
| Nor guess what vision, vast and free, | |
| God keeps in store for souls like thee. | |
| But still the sentry pines, which wave | 55 |
| Their boughs above thy honored grave, | |
| Shall be thy emblems brave and fit, | |
| Firm rooted in the stalwart sod; | |
| Blessing the earth, while spurning it, | |
| Content with nothing short of God. | 60 |
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