John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The Poetical Works in Four Volumes. 1892.
Personal PoemsWithin the Gate
W
Of the dear friends who walked
Beside us, sharers of the hopes and fears
Of five and forty years,
And heard her battle-horn
Sound through the valleys of the sleeping North,
Calling her children forth,
And age, with forecast wise
Of the long strife before the triumph won,
Girded his armor on.
We heard the dead-bells toll
For the unanswering many, and we knew
The living were the few.
The inevitable door,
Listened and looked, as all have done, to win
Some token from within.
The impenetrable wall
Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt,
On all who sat without.
And many a ghostly tale
Wherewith the ages spanned the gulf between
The seen and the unseen,
Solace to doubtful pain,
And touch, with groping hands, the garment hem
Of truth sufficing them,
Of an all-baffling quest,
We thought of holy lives that from us passed
Hopeful unto the last,
Like Him of Nazareth,
The many mansions of the Eternal days
Lift up their gates of praise.
Methought, O friend, I saw
In thy true life of word, and work, and thought
The proof of all we sought.
Immortal prophecy?
And feel, when with thee, that thy footsteps trod
An everlasting road?
Thy scorn of selfish ease;
Not for the poor prize of an earthly goal
Thy strong uplift of soul.
To nature and to art
In fair-formed Hellas in her golden prime,
Thy Philothea’s time.
And for the poor deny
Thyself, and see thy fresh, sweet flower of fame
Wither in blight and blame.
The lowliest of our race,
Sure the Divine economy must be
Conservative of thee!
Seek out its great allies;
Good must find good by gravitation sure,
And love with love endure.
Whereby awhile I wait,
I give blind grief and blinder sense the lie:
Thou hast not lived to die!