My Father's Fifty-Third Birth-Day

A tear of stir, and storm, and strife,
Has mixed the snows of time
With the sharp hail of thickening cares
Upon thy brow sublime.
But yet the firm undaunted step
That marks the might of truth —
The eye undimmed, the fearless heart,
Are thine, as in thy youth.
And as the tree that feels the gale
The fiercest and the first,
Glistens the soonest in the sun,
Through scattered storm-clouds burst,' —
So, when the false world's strife is done
And time has passed away,
The brightest beam of heaven's own light
About thy head shall play!