Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - A Shadow lyrics

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   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 pa**, as they have pa**ed,   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.