I live for those that 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, martyrs, patriots, 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 truths from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction,
And fulfill God’s great design.

I live to hail that season,
By gifted ones foretold,
When men 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 of old.

I live for those that 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.

George Linnaeus Banks,
Daisies in the Grass, 1865
Also ap­peared in the Tonic Solfa
Reporter, June 1861.