There was a time when morning seemed
A continent no foot could cross,
When one brief hour of summer light
Out-measured now a season’s loss;
When every road beyond the hill
Was rumor, promise, beckoning call,
And love appeared a golden gate
That once passed through would conquer all.
So thinks the child who sees two hands
Still joined through winter into spring,
Who hears one name in one dear mouth,
And deems such faith a common thing.
He does not know what years conceal,
What tempers grind, what habits tire,
How bread is earned, how silence grows,
How coals remain after the fire.
Yet blessed is that early dream.
Though false in part, it is not vain;
The rainbow comes, the rose is fair,
Though neither may forever reign.
The heart must first believe too much
Before it learns a wiser art:
To prize the bloom though petals fall,
And hold transience near the heart.
I knew a woman fierce and bright,
Whose glance could wound, whose laugh could heal;
We loved as only mortals do
Who think their first great vow is steel.
But steel may rust where weather works,
And vows may bend where pressures move;
We found that love may yet remain
Where life denies the shape thereof.
For there are pairs who burn with truth
And yet cannot inhabit peace;
Who meet in longing, clash in bread,
And find no quarrel’s full release.
No villain there, no faithless plot,
No lack of care the cause may prove—
But two unlike and earnest souls
Whom even love cannot remove.
And once, when law had marked the breach,
And pens had done what swords might spare,
We went to hear old songs once more
And stood beneath the concert glare.
The crowd was one great breathing tide,
The drums like distant thunder rolled;
We danced, and for a little while
Forgot what bitter truth had told.
O tender fraud! O merciful
Brief stay against the measured end!
For sometimes hearts already torn
Need not a cure, but need a friend.
And years thereafter, when I played
A low and finger-woven air,
She kept the time with tambourine
And said by silence she was there.
Think not all grief is meant to pass
Like rain from off the wagon wheel.
Some sorrows are the form love takes
When death has touched what once was real.
The child struck down, the comrade lost,
The mother hushed, the doorway bare—
No season’s turn annuls such names,
No counsel makes the room less spare.
They told me there is time to mourn,
Then time to set the burden by.
I could not. Nor would I if bid,
Though wiser judges should stand nigh.
For grief is not a chain alone,
Nor merely wound, nor ash, nor scar;
It is the shadow cast by love
Still shining from a hidden star.
Yet mark this too: one must not build
So close against that monument
That all the winds of coming days
Find every little entrance pent.
Leave space enough between the stones
That seeds may lodge and roots may start;
Let future weather, faint at first,
Leak softly through the broken heart.
I learned from elders sterner truths
Than books of polished comfort give:
Humility is not to think
Thyself unworthy still to live,
Nor stoop in self-despising mood,
Nor wear a meek and borrowed face;
It is to cease from constant watch
Of how thy image keeps its place.
The eagle boasted of his height
And circled loud the upper blue;
A hummingbird with smaller wings
Passed farther than the proud bird flew.
So often does the world mistake
What noise is worth, what silence knows;
The root works deep without acclaim,
The hidden spring more purely flows.
And if one virtue guards the rest,
Lest courage sour and wisdom rot,
It is that lowly inward grace
Which seeks no throne, yet lacks it not.
Strength without it grows hard and vain,
Knowledge with it grows clear and kind;
Without it even love may turn
To making idols of the mind.
For love is not the conquering host
The younger songs were pleased to name.
It does not level every wall,
Nor make all contrary hearts the same.
It cannot always house two lives,
Nor mend each flaw, nor right each wrong;
Yet still it walks through ruined fields
And teaches broken men a song.
It lingers where the papers fail,
Where doors are shut, where vows are done;
It stands half-lit beside the stage
When all the legal words are won.
It keeps time softly out of sight,
It hears the verse one cannot say,
It knows that what could never stay
May still not wholly fade away.
And life? It is no straightened road
Where only flawless feet advance.
It bends through loss, through war, through dusk,
Through accident and second chance.
Some walk with many for a span,
Some long with one and lose them soon;
Some keep a ghost beside their bed,
Some learn to bless an altered tune.
No traveler goes free of pain.
No household bars the winter out.
No creed exempts the faithful soul
From grief, from hunger, fear, or doubt.
But none need bear these things alone,
Though night be wide and answers fail;
There moves beside us, oft unseen,
A Presence walking on the trail.
Therefore when evening dims the land
And sky grows dark above the plain,
Sit down a while and hear the wind
Move through the stubble after rain.
Think not thy wounds have made thee lost,
Nor scars have cast thee from the whole;
The very ache by which thou grievest
May be the doorway of the soul.
And if thou canst not yet rejoice,
Then wonder still; that too is prayer.
If thou canst not yet understand,
Then breathe, and know that Love is there.
Not conquering all, but bearing all;
Not ending tears, but seeing through;
Not promising an easy road,
But walking every mile with you.
