OPPORTUNITY
by: Walter Malone (1866-1915)
- HEY do me
wrong who say I come no more
- When once I knock and fail to find you in;
- For every day I stand outside your door
- And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win.
-
- Wail not for precious chances passed away!
- Weep not for golden ages on the wane!
- Each night I burn the records of the day--
- At sunrise every soul is born again!
-
- Dost thou behold thy lost youth all aghast?
- Dost reel from righteous Retribution's blow?
- Then turn from blotted archives of the past
- And find the future's pages white as snow.
-
- Art thou a mourner? Rouse thee from thy spell;
- Art thou a sinner? Sins may be forgiven;
- Each morning gives thee wings to flee from hell,
- Each night a star to guide thy feet to heaven.
-
- Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
- To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
- My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
- But never bind a moment yet to come.
-
- Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
- I lend my arm to all who say "I can!"
- No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep
- But yet might rise and be again a man!
"Opportunity" is reprinted
from The Little Book of American Poets: 1787-1900. Ed.
Jessie B. Rittenhouse. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1915. |
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POEMS BY WALTER MALONE |
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