At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, <br />When you set your fancies free, <br />Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned-- <br />Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, <br />--Pity me? <br /> <br />Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! <br />What had I on earth to do <br />With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? <br />Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel <br />--Being--who? <br /> <br />One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, <br />Never doubted clouds would break, <br />Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, <br />Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, <br />Sleep to wake. <br /> <br />No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time <br />Greet the unseen with a cheer! <br />Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, <br />"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,--fight on, fare ever <br />There as here!"<br /><br />Robert Browning<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/epilogue-4/
