 | Vigil and vision |  |
PORTO INVENTO.
THE time is sick with toil and care and sin;Life's arteries are choked with doubt and strife;
In all its ways Will's brambles, thick and rife,
Hinder his feet that fain to peace would win;
The world without is rotten and within.
No drug will serve; the canker of our life
Calls for the mercy of the surgeon's knife;
The case is past the approof of medicine.
But we, our day to evening drawing near,
Time-taught the real from the things that seem
To know, absolved from hope and doubt and fear,
Here in this backwater of thought we dream,
Content to suffer, with unsorrowing eye,
Life's senseless whirl of chances lapse us by.
| Vigil and vision | |