Poems (Hoffman)/Our Better Selves
OUR BETTER SELVES
Face to face in the light with our better selvesSometimes for a moment the mind that delvesIn the problems written below and on high,In the flowers of earth and the clouds of the sky,The enigmas penciled on star and stone—Stands face to face in the light with its own—And looks as the stone to the shining star,To what we might be from what we are.And we try to dash off memory's shelvesSome volume from sight of our better selves.
'Tis then we long for a nobler part;For a broader mind and a larger heart;For that better self—how it speaks and shamesOur small deceits and our petty aims,'Till we sigh to be noble, and good, and true,And do what our better selves tell us to do.Turn back from the zigzag path we have trodTo a highway broad as the love of God.
We shall stand some time face to face with the pastWhen the die of our lives is forever cast;For the soul—the soul—it can never forget—Will it shudder and sicken in vain regret,And sigh to return to the sphere of men—To be, to be, what it might have been?