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Excelsior

Let not the past hang heavy as a mill stone to thy heels,
To drag thee downward, as each upward impulse to thy nobler self appeals;
But, as the joyous butterfly from its chrysalistic shell breaks free,
So from thy past must thou rise jubilant, thine own true self to be.
Repentance! must not repentance claim its toll of sighs and tears?
The proof of true repentance is to flee the sin-smirched spheres.
When from the towering heights of thy new life thou shalt review the past,
Then shalt thou know repentance filled thy soul from first to last;
Repentance, true repentance, which flings the past away,
And rises to the whiteness of a glad new present day.

M. F. K. Pye.