Explore "Hope" by Irving Sidney Dix on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Kind guardian of the Lonely Shore, / And Sorrow's true and only friend, / Comforting angel of the poor -- / What heavenly spirit did descend / With passive voice, with ways unknown, / Within thy very self complete? / O Hope, when left at last alone / We fall a suppliant at thy feet / And worship there, with heart forlorn / From childhood's land of make-believe, / Through early youth, the brightening morn, / Till tottering age, the fading eve.
And who could walk without thee, friend? / Who walk dim paths without thy hand? / From out the world shouldst thou ascend / Blind Poverty would stalk the land; / Despair would seize some simple knave / And Hatred every evil one, -- / O Hope, for more would seek the grave / Without thy timely vision shown: / The sick upon the lowly bed; / The blind a-begging as of yore; / The weeping child who works unfed; / The prisoner by the fatal door, / All, led along, still cling below / To feel thy subtle charms so free, / As wearily, drearily on they go, / Following, following after thee.