THE alert and valiant faith that could respond,
Upon life’s threshold, to the highest call,
Unquestioning of what might lie beyond,-
Courage afield and courtesy in hall,
And sweet, unbroken patience therewithal,
And simple loyalty,- can these things be
The virtues that have died with chivalry?
The lapsing stream that leads to love and fate,
Now mystic-shadowed, and now broad and free,
Reflecting all the gold of heaven’s gate;
The snowy bird’s symbolic purity,
The toilsome contest and the victory,
The troubled joy of life, and after these,
The crowning guerdon of the perfect peace,-
These dreams have filled my dazzled sense and brain,
With images so vivid that at last
I wake to life and find them all again
Repeated in the present as the past,
The hues recolored and the forms recast;
And in familiar eyes I see outshine
The old heroic faith in love divine.
No empty fable of a day long dead,
No baseless vision of some sanguine saint,
No legend, only half remember?d,
Of prowess obsolete and virtues quaint;
But be this rather a reflection faint
Of that which taught me how the near and real
Surpass in strength and beauty the ideal.
(Emma Lazarus)
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