CONCORD.
MAY 31, 1882.
“FARTHER horizons every year!”
Oh, 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,
Through summer’s sun and winter’s chill,
With purpose stanch and dauntless will,
Sped by a noble discontent,
You climb toward the blue firmament,—
Climb as the winds climb, mounting high
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.
“Farther horizons every year!”
Beneath you pass the tribes of men,
Your gracious boughs o’ershadow them;
Their jarring speech, their faulty creed.
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 bent to win an upward way
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.
“Farther horizons every year!”
So he, by reverent hands just laid
Beneath your boughs of wavering shade,
Climbed as you climb the upward way,
Knowing not boundary or stay.
His eyes surcharged with heavenly lights,
His senses steeped in heavenly sights,
His soul attuned to heavenly keys,
How should he pause for rest and ease,
Or turn his wingèd feet again,
To share the common feasts of men?
But still, above their fickle moods,
Wooing, constraining him awhile,
Beckoned the shining altitudes.
“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!
We may not follow with our eyes
To where thy farther pathway lies,
Nor guess what vision vast and free
God keeps in store for souls like thee.
But still the pines that bend and wave
Their boughs above thy honored grave
Shall be thy emblem brave and fit,
Firm-rooted in the stalwart sod,
Blessing the earth while spurning it,
Content with nothing short of God.