What I Live For

I live for those who love me,
  Whose hearts are kind and true;
For the Heaven that smiles above me,
  And awaits my spirit too;
For all human ties that bind me,
For the task by God assigned me,
For the bright hopes yet to find me,
  And the good that I can do.

I live to learn their story
  Who suffered for my sake;
To emulate their glory
  And follow in their wake:
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The heroic of all ages,
Whose deeds crowd History's pages
  And Time's great volume make.

I live to hold communion
  With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union
  'Twixt Nature's heart and mine;
To profit by affliction,
Reap truth from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction,
  And fulfill God's grand design.

I live to hail the season,
  By gifted ones foretold,
When man shall live by reason,
  And not alone by gold;
When man to man united,
And every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted,
  As Eden was of old.

I live for those who love me,
  For those who know me true;
For the heaven that smiles above me,
  And awaits my spirit too;
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
  And the good that I can do.

--G. Linnaeus Banks, 1821-1881