  How strangely dark are the vapors That sometimes obscure the way, Ere the light of truth advances To the noon of a perfect day. As the unforeseen approaches In stealth from ambushed retreat, The mettle of soul is summoned Its emergencies to meet. To shrink by its sudden coming, To surrender our control Without a struggle for vantage, Betrays a weakness of soul. The conflicts with emergencies We meet in our daily call, Give strength or death to moral worth As we conquer them or fall. To meet at once with valor true The attack from an ambuscade, In moral strife, or bloody war, Hath many a hero made. Who has not trained himself to meet The vicissitudes that arise Upon the course of life's stern race, Must fail to secure its prize. To hold a pessimistic view, And see the world as darkly "blue," And feel mankind is false, untrue, Is not a just conclusion; But Truth demands that Hope shall wear No false rose in her silken hair, To hide Deceit, Fraud, and Despair, That feed on wild Delusion. |
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