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 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 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