A Shadow

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    I said unto myself, if I were dead,
        What would befall these children?    What would be
        Their fate, who now are looking up to me
        For help and furtherance?    Their lives, I said,
    Would be a volume wherein I have read
        But the first chapters, and no longer see
        To read the rest of their dear history,
        So full of beauty and so full of dread.
    Be comforted; the world is very old,
        And generations pass, as they have passed,
        A troop of shadows moving with the sun;
    Thousands of times has the old tale been told;
        The world belongs to those who come the last,
        They will find hope and strength as we have done.