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| SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, | |
| That of our vices we can frame | |
| A ladder, if we will but tread | |
| Beneath our feet each deed of shame! | |
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| All common things, each day’s events, | 5 |
| That with the hour begin and end, | |
| Our pleasures and our discontents, | |
| Are rounds by which we may ascend. | |
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| The low desire, the base design, | |
| That makes another’s virtues less; | 10 |
| The revel of the ruddy wine, | |
| And all occasions of excess; | |
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| The longing for ignoble things; | |
| The strife for triumph more than truth; | |
| The hardening of the heart, that brings | 15 |
| Irreverence for the dreams of youth; | |
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| All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds, | |
| That have their root in thoughts of ill; | |
| Whatever hinders or impedes | |
| The action of the nobler will;— | 20 |
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| All these must first be trampled down | |
| Beneath our feet, if we would gain | |
| In the bright fields of fair renown | |
| The right of eminent domain. | |
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| We have not wings, we cannot soar; | 25 |
| But we have feet to scale and climb | |
| By slow degrees, by more and more, | |
| The cloudy summits of our time. | |
| |
| The mighty pyramids of stone | |
| That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, | 30 |
| When nearer seen, and better known, | |
| Are but gigantic flights of stairs. | |
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| The distant mountains, that uprear | |
| Their solid bastions to the skies, | |
| Are crossed by pathways, that appear | 35 |
| As we to higher levels rise. | |
| |
| The heights by great men reached and kept | |
| Were not attained by sudden flight, | |
| But they, while their companions slept, | |
| Were toiling upward in the night. | 40 |
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| Standing on what too long we bore | |
| With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, | |
| We may discern—unseen before— | |
| A path to higher destinies, | |
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| Nor deem the irrevocable Past | 45 |
| As wholly wasted, wholly vain, | |
| If, rising on its wrecks, at last | |
| To something nobler we attain. | |
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