Poems About Hope

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour.That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,Beginning to die too, in the glass. Little has yet been changed, I think;The shutters are shut,--no light may pass Save two long rays through the hinge's chink.

Sixteen years old when she died! Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name,--It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim,

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--And Winter, slumbering in the open air,Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!With lips unbrighten’d, wreathless brow, I stroll:And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,And Hope without an object cannot live.

Unfading Hope! when life's last embers burn,When soul to soul, and dust to dust return!Heaven to thy charge resigns the awful hour!O, then thy kingdom comes! Immortal Power!What though each spark of earth-born rapture flyThe quivering lip, pale cheek, and closing eye!Bright to the soul thy seraph hands conveyThe morning dream of life's eternal day,--Then, then, the triumph and the trance begin,And all the phoenix spirit burns within!

Daughter of Faith, awake, arise, illumeThe dread unknown, the chaos of the tomb;

God is good.And flight is destined for the callow wing,And the high appetite implies the food,And souls most reach the level whence they spring;O Life of very life! set free our powers,Hasten the travail of the yearning hours.

Thou, to whom old Philosophy bent low,To the wise few mysteriously revealed;Thou, whom each humble Christian worships now,In the poor hamlet and the open field:Once an idea, now Comforter and Friend,Hope of the human heart, descend, descend!

Hope is a subtle glutton; He feeds upon the fair;And yet, inspected closely, What abstinence is there!

His is the halcyon table That never seats but one,And whatsoever is consumed The same amounts remain.

SINCE thou hast given me this good hope, O God,That while my footsteps tread the flowery sodAnd the great woods embower me, and white dawnAnd purple even sweetly lead me onFrom day to day, and night to night, O God,My life shall no wise miss the light of love;But ever climbing, climb aboveMan’s one poor star, man’s supine lands,Into the azure steadfastness of death,My life shall no wise lack the light of love,My hands not lack the loving touch of hands;But day by day, while yet I draw my breath,And day by day, unto my last of years,I shall be one that has a perfect friend.Her heart shall taste my laughter and my tears,And her kind eyes shall lead me to the end.

When by my solitary hearth I sit, And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit, And the bare heath of life presents no bloom; Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed, And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head.

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night, Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,Should sad Despondency my musings fright, And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away, Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof, And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof.

O SWEET To-morrow!— After to-day There will awayThis sense of sorrow.Then let us borrowHope, for a gleamingSoon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray— No gray!

While the winds wing us Sighs from The Gone, Nearer to dawn

The still sweet meadows shimmered: and I stood And cursed them, bloom of hedge and bird of tree,And bright and high beyond the hunch-backed wood The thunder and the splendour of the sea.

Give back the Babylon where I was born, The lips that gape give back, the hands that grope,And noise and blood and suffocating scorn An eddy of fierce faces--and a hope

That 'mid those myriad heads one head find place, With brown hair curled like breakers of the sea,And two eyes set so strangely in the face That all things else are nothing suddenly.

ONCE on a time, from scenes of lightAn angel winged his airy flight;Down to this earth in haste he came,And wrote, in lines of living flame,These words on everything he met,--"Cheer up, be not discouraged yet!"Then back to heaven with speed he flew,Attuned his golden harp anew;Whilst the angelic throng came roundTo catch the soul-inspiring sound;And heaven was filled with new delight,For HOPE had been to earth that night.

WHAT though from life's bounties thou mayest have fallen? What though thy sun in dark clouds may have set?There is a bright star that illumes the horizon, Telling thee truly, "There's hope for thee yet."This earth may look dull, old friends may forsake thee; Sorrows that never before thou hast metMay roll o'er thy head; yet that bright star before thee Shines to remind thee "there's hope for thee yet."'T is but folly to mourn, though fortune disdain thee, Though never so darkly thy sun may have set;'T is wisdom to gaze at the bright star before thee, And shout, as you gaze, "There's hope for me yet."