Walter Malone, "Opportunity" (1916)
They do me wrong who say I come no more
When once I knock and fail to find you in;
For every day I stand outside your door,
And bid you wake and rise to fight and win.
Wail not for precious chances passed away,
Weep not for golden ages on the wane;
Each night I burn the records of the day,
At sunrise every soul is born again.
Laugh like a boy at splendors that have sped,
To vanished joys be blind and deaf and dumb;
My judgments seal the dead past with its dead,
But never bind a moment yet to come.
Though deep in mire, wring not your hands and weep;
I lend an arm to all who say: “I can.”
No shamefaced outcast ever sank so deep
But he might rise and be again a man.
—Walter Malone.
Published in Half-Century Magazine, August, 1916