 | Lines in Pleasant Places |  |
255
HOPE.
The heart with sorrow bowed shuts out the light.And broods in gloomy shade, inalternate
With aught of cheer; no lift permit, or gleam
Of sunny promise to pervade the air
That sluggish stagnates in the courts of woe.
The ear is pained at echoes caught from life,
That surges on in heedless irrespect
Of all beyond itself, and muffled thought
Runs o'er the gamut of absorbing pain,
Repelling the insidious step of sound
That threats the reign supreme of silent grief.
The hours pass drearily, unnoted save
By the dull throbs of misery and doubt,
That make the calendar of present ill,
Timed by the horologue of dark dismay.
But, as the carol of a bird obtrudes,
Amid the pauses of a summer storm,
When all is darkest, dreariest, and lone,
Steals in a note of Hope, which, late debarred,
Stood near and waited, with a loving trust,
For Grief's reaction from its weariness,
To come again, like some enkindling light,
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'Tis then, the spell annulled that lately bound,
New scenes appear; the tide of human life
Again rolls on, harmonious as before;
Sweet sounds break joyous on the willing ear;
The hours their import wear of activeness,
And duty due and done, and heaven and earth
Take brighter garniture, and holy cheer
Its effluence imparts to haply wake
And fill to plenitude the hungry soul.
O, blessed Hope! what were we, lacking thee?
Thine is the mission that divinest comes
And closest touches the acuter self,
Coming, like some sweet benediction, down,
And soothes the spirit's turbulence to peace.
E'en now, as when Pandora's mythic box,
Unclasped, released the goods that Jove designed,
—Vagrant and lost, that might have staid to bless,—
We feel that though all evil may assail,
And night concentrate round us in eclipse
Dark as the fabled cave of Erebus,
With Hope remaining, we may ill defy.
| Lines in Pleasant Places | |