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Torch‐Bearers
- DARK is the night; and through its haunted shadows
- We blindly grope and stumble—sometimes fall;
- No star is near enough to light the darkness,
- And priest‐lit tapers cast no light at all,
- Save such a feeble and delusive glimmer
- As night‐lamps cast upon a sick‐room wall.
- Yet, each a torch we bear—lit or unlighted;
- Burning for self it is a marsh‐light’s gleam,
- Kindled for others ’tis the child of sunlight,
- And darkness shrinks through twilight at its beam.
- Were each torch duly lit, O world long darkened,
- How would you bear the sudden light supreme?
- Vague dreams and vain! See, thou who idly dreamest
- Of what would be if every torch were lit,
- See where thine own smoulders a wasted ember,
- Thy torch—for noblest uses framed and fit.
- Light thine own torch—and hold it to thy brother,
- And his shall kindle at the flame of it.
1889.
