 | Miami Woods : a golden wedding and other poems |  |
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[IV]
The Happy Valleys.
I.
I sat, far in the evening,My heart and soul aglow,
With some cherisht tokens by me
Of the crowded “Long Ago.”
I had drawn them from recesses
Held as sacred as my truth,
Some with manhood's shadows on them,
And on some the lights of youth:
And I noted, as life's periods
Came together thus from far,
That the brightest had its cloudlet,
And the darkest had its star.
II.
My whole life spread out before me,Like a crowded map unroll'd:
With the free, wild, summery boyhood,
The staid manhood—formal—cold;
All the dreams, that never would be,
Though I nurst them, aught but dreams;
The realities—hard—flinty—
And with iron in their seams;
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Even yet, like marriage bells,
And the low, sad tones, still telling
What the dirge forever tells:—
III.
All spread out before my vision,And stole in upon my brain,
Till I lived my life all over—
With its pleasure and its pain.
And I askt myself: “Now was it,
To all others, or to you,
Worth the living, for the little
It enabled you to do?”
And myself replied: “By Heaven,
Not by man, are we approved.
For myself, I hold it ample
To have lived, and to have loved.
IV.
“For ‘all others,’ the man livethNot, whose judgment I accept.
Who assails me, let him show me
That he hath himself not slept
At his post, when all around him
Moved the foe that robs and kills—
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The broad earth with all its ills.
By the judgment that 's of Heaven,
Though its vision may appall,
In my strength, or in my weakness,
I will stand, or I will fall!”
V.
To a livelier sense of being,With this answer I was stir'd:
But the dusk within my chamber
Soon again my vision blur'd;
And the loved and long-departed
All came back to me again—
And the living loved were moving
In the bright and shining train.
Though my life knew many sorrows,
I had cause for much delight:
Yet my thoughts all took their color
From my chamber and the night.
VI.
And around still troopt the shadowsOf the living and the dead,
Till the voice of the last departed,
In the old tones, sweetly said:
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In the light beyond the sky,
That is where the Happy Valleys
Of the dear departed lie.
When the golden bowl is broken,
And the silver cord is shred,
We shall meet there all together,
You the living, we the dead.
VII.
“There are trials still, and sorrows,Where the Serpent left his Trail,
But the true and trusting spirit
Will not falter there, or fail.
In the Book of Books 't is written,
By the Light that is the day,
‘But my Word, though all else perish,
Shall in no wise pass away;’
And that Word contains the Promise,
That the weary heart shall rest
Where the Happy Valleys whiten
With the Mansions of the Blest.”
| Miami Woods : a golden wedding and other poems | |