Across the Water

My Friend, I met you when the Shadow lay
Darkly betwixt you and the outer day;
Your life, frost-bitten to the core, was dumb
With Winter, as it' Spring would never come.
The smile that sprang up in your eyes to give
A Stranger greeting had no heart to live

For you, when it had cheered me on my way.

I saw you like some War-horse who had smelt
Burnt powder, and the joy of onset felt,
Now doomed to "plough the furrow, who should

chance
To catch the music, see the Colours dance,
And hear his fellows neighing for the war,
And he, too, snuffs the lighting from afar —

Down comes the lash, in mist the visions melt.

I knew not how your life was crossed and crossed,
As is a letter, till the sense looks lost;
Nor what you held at heart, and still must hold,
That makes the whole wide warmest world a-cold.
But now the heavens brighten overhead,
And though the ways are miry you must tread,

I greet you on the break-up of the Frost!

Up and tight on, my Mend, with spirit stripped
As is the hardened War-lance, grimly gripped,
That late was green and leafy in the wood,
Now bared for battle and the reek of blood.
There is a darkness we can only dash
Out of the eyes with the soul's fighting-flash —

No help in giving up through feeling hipped!

In such a world as this it ne'er avails
To sit and eat the heart, or gnaw the nails;
The live souls have to swim against the tide,
The deadest fish can float with it and ride.
Heroic breath must lift and clear the skies
That we have clouded with our own vain sighs;

Heroic breath must fill your future sails.

It is the well-borne burden that will tone
Our manhood; turn the gristle into bone.
The storms that on the hill-side bow the trees
Help bring the power to bear, and knot their

knees,
And (I have seen them kneeling) thus prepare
Them to receive the onsets they must bear;

So 'neath its load the might of manhood's grown.

Nor murmur of a life by Falsehood marred,
Or Roof-tree by the fires of Ruin charred.
Why, what hath Falsehood in the world to do
But Lie to Live, and die to prove the True,
And then be buried, while the new life waves
Its greenness o'er the Carrion in such graves!

But strike! strike on, strike often, and strike
hard!

Hope, work, fight on, my Friend, and you shall
stand
One of the foremost of a noble band;
Stand visibly in the smile of Heaven, and shed
Light from within you, wheresoe'er you tread;
Stand on the higher summit to transmit
A new live heart-beat from the Infinite,

To kindle, as it throbs throughout the land.

The world is waking from its phantom dreams,
To make out that which is from that which

seems;
And in the light of day shall blush to find
What Wraiths of darkness had the power to blind
Its vision; what thin walls of misty gray,
As if of granite, stopped its onward way:

Up, and be busy as the early beams!