A song of courage

The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone

O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way
And the billows of clouds that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny

This world is the nursе of all we know
This world is the mother of all wе feel
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
When all that we know, or feel, or see
Shall pass like an unreal mystery

The secret things of the grave are there
Where all but this frame must surely be
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live, to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see?