LITANY.
NIGHT and day and work and play, time and toil and thrall,
Shade and sun for all and one, death for one and all:
Watch and ward and chain and cord, rose and thorn and rue,
Fence and fate and bolt and gate; time and thought fare through.
Smile and tear and hope and fear still for you and me;
Love and life and sleep and strife; faith alone wins free.
Day and night and dark and light, sea and shore and sky,
Wealth and dearth: farewell to earth! Time it is to die.
Life and Love about, above, flutter to and fro;
Long they're sought and once they're caught, time it is to go.
All as one, the ripe years run, hasten to the night:
Feed thy fill, whilst lingers still, still a little light.
Hap and hope! In heaven's scope is how many a star!
Thick as bees they swarm and these even as we are.
What availing is in wailing or in railing, what?
If Life's weaving be deceiving, death shall cut the knot.
Joy is folly, melancholy idle: better be
Sea-birds sleeping on the leaping billows of the sea.
What's to do with me and you, in this world of dream?
Moth and fly are you and I, motes in the sun-beam.
Strife and seeming, doubt and deeming, let them play their play,
Let them flutter out their utter term and pass away.
If thy bosom bear a blossom, cherish it and heed
Not the jealous fools that tell us Love is but a weed.
Pain and pleasant, past and present, future, friend and foe,
All Life's weaving, glee and grieving, must thou leave and go.
Wheel and windle, spool and spindle, let them weave and spin;
Let them wind us what assigned us is, day out, day in.
Sweet and bitter, gold and flitter, all must have its day;
Little matter on Life's platter what for us they lay.
Vain contending, world-amending, dreams of sleep and wake:
Life's whole beauty is in duty done for duty's sake.
Cease thy sighing: day is dying, see, in yonder West:
Yet a little, in sleep's spital thou, too, shalt have rest.
