C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
To the Past
By William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
T
Stern are the fetters round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadows of thy womb.
Youth, Manhood, Age, that draws us to the ground,
And last, Man’s Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
Thou hast my earlier friends—the good, the kind—
Yielded to thee with tears—
The venerable form, the exalted mind.
The lost ones back; yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
All passage save to those who hence depart,
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou givest them back, nor to the broken heart.
Beauty and excellence unknown. To thee
Earth’s wonder and her pride
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea.
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith;
Love, that ’midst grief began,
And grew with years, and faltered not in death.
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered.
With thee are silent Fame,
Forgotten Arts, and Wisdom disappeared.
Yet thou shalt yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time
Shall then come forth, to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.
Kind words, remembered voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul’s apparent seat:
Of pure affection shall be knit again:
Alone shall Evil die,
And sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung;
And her who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave—the beautiful and young.