| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893. | | | | A Book of Sonnets | | A Shadow |
| | | 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 | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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