Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/462

430   Follow with reverent steps the great example
 * Of Him whose holy work was “doing good;”

So shall the wide earth seem our Father’s temple,
 * Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.

Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangor
 * Of wild war music o’er the earth shall cease;

Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
 * And in its ashes plant the tree of peace!

, looking backward from his manhood’s prime, Sees not the spectre of his misspent time?
 * And, through the shade

Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind
 * From his loved dead?

Who bears no trace of passion’s evil force? Who shuns thy sting, O terrible Remorse?
 * Who does not cast

On the thronged pages of his memory’s book, At times, a sad and half-reluctant look,
 * Regretful of the past?

Alas! the evil which we fain would shun We do, and leave the wished-for good undone:
 * Our strength to-day

Is but to-morrow’s weakness, prone to fall; Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all
 * Are we alway.

Yet who, thus looking backward o’er his years, Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,
 * If he hath been

Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,