Daybreak

Daybreak came late this morning, delaying my prayers and my early morning chores. It did come, the birds woke, a gentle, cool breeze (finally after months of hot, humid winds) gave impetus to my need to get busy.

I found another poem, written in the late 1980s. It suited this morning.

Escaping spectered dark,
   Song shadows forth
To permeate the crispness
   And the stillness.
Bright preludes lilt in sleep-deaf ears
   And beckon sunlight from the mist.
          Pregnant day
          Throbbing life
          Infinite
          Forever
   Perpetually beginning
          Daybreak

O.K. , So I've been looking at Longfellow lately, and should have used his "Psalm of Life" for this day's post.  I felt like "doing."  I know that "time is fleeting."   I have learned to "labor and to wait."  This is not a gloom and doom poem.  Read it carefully and see that it is not only a Psalm, but an exhortation to be and to do, to leave a footprint  - however small - in the "sands of time."

So listen to Henry:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnsest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
   Is our destined end or way:
But to act, that each tomorrow
   Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
   And our hearts though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
   In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
   Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act - act in the living present!
   Heart within, and God o'erhead.

Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time; -

Footprints that perhaps another,
   Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
   With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
   learn to labor and to wait.

9/5/11