This text is part of:
[128]
And yet again the mournful bells
In all thy steeple-towers are rung.
And I, obedient to thy will,
Have come a simple wreath to lay,
Superfluous, on a grave that still
Is sweet with all the flowers of May.
I take, with awe, the task assigned;
It may be that my friend might miss,
In his new sphere of heart and mind,
Some token from my hand in this.
By many a tender memory moved,
Along the past my thought I send;
The record of the cause he loved
Is the best record of its friend.
No trumpet sounded in his ear,
He saw not Sinai's cloud and flame,
But never yet to Hebrew seer
A clearer voice of duty came.
God said: “Break thou these yokes; undo
These heavy burdens. I ordain
A work to last thy whole life through,
A ministry of strife and pain.
Forego thy dreams of lettered ease,
Put thou the scholar's promise by,
The rights of man are more than these. “
He heard, and answered: ‘Here am I!’
Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1888-89.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.