A Shadow

I said unto myself, if I were dead,

  What would befall these children?  What would be

  Their fate, who now are looking up to me

  For help and furtherance?  Their lives, I said,

Would be a volume wherein I have read

  But the first chapters, and no longer see

  To read the rest of their dear history,

  So full of beauty and so full of dread.

Be comforted; the world is very old,

  And generations pass, as they have passed,

  A troop of shadows moving with the sun;

Thousands of times has the old tale been told;

  The world belongs to those who come the last,

  They will find hope and strength as we have done.