To Richard Henry Stoddard
(In reply to his poem called "Wishing and Having.")
"Perhaps it will all come right at last;
It may be, when all is done,
We shall be together in some good world,
Where to wish and to have are one."
--STODDARD.
O FRIEND! be sure that a spirit came,
In the gloom of your saddened hour,
To plant that hope in your hopeless heart,
Like the seed of an Eden flower.
The seed may rest in your brooding breast,
Half stifled in cold and night,
Or be only felt as a yearning dim
Toward comforting peace and light;
But 'twill burst some day into perfect bloom,
And fruition be brightly won;
For the earth-life fades like a dream o' the dark
When all has been said and done!
The earth-life fades in its sin and pain;
But whatever of sweet and pure
Breathed over its pallor and flushed its gloom,
Surviveth for evermore.
O, not as the ghost of a mortal joy,
But as Joy herself from the dead
Upraised to the clear, calm courts of Heaven,
With a halo around her head;
'Tis only the vile and the sad shall die
With the wane of an earthly sun,
And pass like a vision as man awakes
When all has been said and done!
Do you think you have lost your days for aye
In the heart of the woods of spring,
By that seaside town that is glimpsed through mist,
Like the white of a petrel's wing?
Do you think that the patter of tiny feet
Shall never come back again,
And that those whom the rage of Death had killed
Are in sooth forever slain?
Look up! look up! as the hope commands,
From the ruth of the angels won;
The earth-woe fades like a dream o' the night,
When all has been said and done!
O God, we wander in devious ways,
Till the end comes, stern and stark;
We lift our voices of useless wail
From the depths of the hollow dark;
Yet the Christ is there, though we see him not.
But only when sorrow lowers
Wildest, we feel through the hollow dark
A strange, warm hand in ours;
And a voice is heard in the music of heaven,
Saying: "Courage and hope, O, son!"
The earth-woe fades like a dream o' the night,
When all has been said and done!
