By Tom Davidson
At this time of Thanksgiving and the Holidays, this blog series is a tribute to my grandfather.
At this time of Thanksgiving and the Holidays, this blog series is a tribute to my grandfather, Robert Harsha Davidson, and a sharing of some lessons in life and leadership passed down among hundreds of poems through my family to yours. Please enjoy his wisdom and share it with credit to him. May you have and be the role model he was to my family and me.
The Departed Hour
by Robert Harsha Davidson
(circa World War I)
The clock strikes! The Hour is complete!
no thought or word or deed
Can now find place within that finished space.
What would I give to have that hour back again
To change some word, some thought, some action that is gone!Ah me! A fool’s regret is that which backward
turns.
To the completed year or day or hour ~
And vainly wishes for it back again.
That he might better live that time
now gone forever!For this is true, my friend!
The striking clock which bade farewell
To that last hour announced the starting
Of another span which each must fill
With thoughts and words and deeds ~
each for Himself!Then grieve not, friend for that departed hour
But turn thy face toward that which greets
thee now ~
And all thou would have done and said and
thought
In that lost dead-locked hour
Strive now to do and say and think!So then remember, friend, thy faults and
failures past ~
Remember them ~ but not in vain, Oh friend!
For the plan is mock to shape the future from
the past!And, steadily advancing o’er the years
Til time is called; and in that instant
E’er the cord is loosed that binds us to
the years
May each our earthly lives behold ~ and gazing
See a world left better for our having lived!
© 2013 The Family of Robert Harsha Davidson. All rights reserved.