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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  To-morrow

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

To-morrow

By William Ellery Channing (1818–1901)

[From Poems. 1843.—Poems. Second Series. 1847.]

TO-MORROW comes; dost say my friend To-morrow?

Far down below those pines the sunset flings

Long arching o’er, its lines of ruddy light,

And the wind murmurs little harmonies,

And underneath their wings the tender birds

Droop their averted heads,—silent their songs.

But not a word whispers, the moaning wind,

Nor when in faint array the primal stars

Trail with the banners of the unfurled night,

Nor even when the low-hung moon just glints

And faintly with few touches seres the wood,

Not there, nor then, doth Nature idly say

Nor whisper idly of another day;

That other morn itself its morrow is,

That other day shall see no shade of this.