Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/479

 "OH MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE."

H may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge man's search

To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing as beauteous order that controls

With growing sway the growing life of man.

So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized

With widening retrospect that bred despair.

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,

A vicious parent shaming still its child

Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;

Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air.

And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobbed religiously in yearning song,

That watched to ease the burden of the world,