15

Of Yesterday.

Speak, poor almsman of to-day, whom none can assure of a to-morrow,

Tell out, with honest heart, the price thou settest upon yesterday.

Is it then a writing in the dust, traced by the finger of idleness,

Which Industry, clean housewife, can wipe away for ever?

Is it as a furrow on the sand, fashioned by the toying

waves,

Quickly to be trampled then again by the feet of the returning tide?

Is it as the pale blue smoke, rising from a peasant's

hovel,

That melted into limpid air, before it topped the larches?

Is it but a vision, unstable and unreal, which wise

men soon forget?

Is it as the stranger of a night,-gone, we heed not whither?

Alas! thou foolish heart, whose thoughts are but as these,

Alas! deluded soul, that hopeth thus of Yesterday.

for, behold, those temples of Ellora, the Brahmin's rock built shrine,

Behold-yon granite cliff, which the North Sea buffeteth in vain,—

That stout old forest fir,-these waking verities of

life,

This guest abiding ever, not strange, nor a servant,

but a son,

Such, O man, are vanity and dreams, transient as a rainbow on the cloud,

Weighed against that solid fact, thine ill-remembered Yesterday.

Come, let me show thee an ensample, where Nature shall instruct us;

Luxuriantly the arguments for truth spring native in her gardens.

Seek we yonder woodman of the plain; he is mea

suring his axe to the elm,

And anon the sturdy strokes ring upon the wintry

air:

Eagerly the village school-boys cluster on the tightened rope,

Shouting, and bending to the pull, or lifted from the ground elastic;

The huge tree boweth like Sisera, boweth to its foes with faintness,

Its sinews crack,-deep groans declare the reeling anguish of Goliath,

The wedge is driven home,-and the saw is at its

heart, and lo, with solemn slowness,

The shuddering monarch riseth from his throne,toppled with a crash,-and is fallen!

Now, shall the mangled stump teach proud man a lesson;

Now, can we from that elm tree's sap distil the wine of Truth.

Heed ye those hundred rings, concentric from the

core,

Eddying in various waves to the red-bark's shorelike rim?

These be the gathering of yesterdays, present all

to-day,

This is the tree's judgment, self-history that cannot be gainsaid:

Seven years agone there was a drought,—and the seventh ring is narrowed;

The fifth from hence was half a deluge,—the fifth is cellular and broad.

Thus, Man, thou art a result, the growth of many

yesterdays,

That stamp thy secret soul with marks of weal or

woe:

Thou art an almanac of self, the living record of thy

deeds;

Spirit hath its scars as well as body, sore and aching in their season:

Here is a knot,-it was a crime; there is a canker,

-selfishness;

Lo, here, the heart-wood rotten; lo, there, perchance, the sap-wood sound.

Nature teacheth not in vain; thy works are in thee,

of thee;

Some present evil bent hath grown of older errors : And what if thou be walking now uprightly? Salve not thy wounds with poison,

As if a petty goodness of to-day hath blotted out the sin of yesterday:

It is well, thou hast life and light; and the Hewer

sheweth mercy,

Dressing the root, pruning the branch, and looking for thy tardy fruits;

But, even here as thou standest, cheerful belike and

careless,

The stains of ancient evil are upon thee, the record of thy wrong is in thee:

For, a curse of many yesterdays is thine, many yesterdays of sin,

That, haply little heeded now, shall blast thy many

morrows.

Shall then a man reck nothing, but hurl mad defiance at his Judge,

Knowing that less than an omnipotent cannot make the has been, not been?

He ought, so Satan spake; he must,-so Atheism urgeth;

He may, it was the libertine's thought; he doth,

the bad world said it.

But thou of humbler heart, thou student wiser for

simplicity,

While Nature warneth thee betimes, heed the loving counsel of Religion.

True, this change is good, and penitence most pre

cious;

But trust not thou thy change, nor rest upon re

pentance;

For all we are corrupted at the core, smooth as surface seemeth;