The Higher Courage1

Come back again, my olden heart!     Ah, fickle spirit and untrue,     I bade the only guide depart     Whose faithfulness I surely knew:     I said, my heart is all too soft;     He who would climb and soar aloft     Must needs keep ever at his side     The tonic of a wholesome pride.     Come back again, my olden heart!     Alas, I called not then for thee;     I called for Courage, and apart     From Pride if Courage could not be,     Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find     In thee a power to lift the mind     This low and grovelling joy above     Tis but the proud can truly love.     Come back again, my olden heart!     With incrustations of the years     Uncased as yet, as then thou wert,     Full-filled with shame and coward fears     Wherewith amidst a jostling throng     Of deeds, that each and all were wrong,     The doubting soul, from day to day,     Uneasy paralytic lay.     Come back again, my olden heart!     I said, Perceptions contradict,     Convictions come, anon depart,     And but themselves as false convict.     Assumptions, hasty, crude and vain,     Full oft to use will Science deign;     The corks the novice plies to-day     The swimmer soon shall cast away.     Come back again, my olden heart!     I said, Behold, I perish quite,     Unless to give me strength to start,     I make myself my rule of right     It must be, if I act at all,     To save my shame I have at call     The plea of all men understood,     Because I willed it, it is good.     Come back again, my olden heart!     I know not if in very deed     This means alone could aid impart     To serve my sickly spirits need;     But clear alike of wild self-will,     And fear that faltered, paltered still,     Remorseful thoughts of after days     A way espy betwixt the ways.     Come back again, old heart! Ah me!     Methinks in those thy coward fears     There might, perchance, a courage be,     That fails in these the manlier years;     Courage to let the courage sink,     Itself a coward base to think,     Rather than not for heavenly light     Wait on to show the truly right.