A Shadow
A Shadow - meaning Summary
Generations Offer Quiet Solace
The speaker imagines his own death and worries about the fate of his children, seeing their lives as a book whose later chapters he cannot read. He then comforts himself by recalling the long continuity of the world and the steady succession of generations. The poem moves from personal anxiety about mortality and parental duty to a consoling belief that future generations will inherit hope and strength.
Read Complete AnalysesI 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.
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