Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

Me darkness total and eclipse of light
Threatens; yet Lord, unto thy will I bow,
If not with gladness, yet at least with calm.
So deep my trust in thee I cannot doubt
This seeming cruelty to be but kindness;
The end thou knowest; 'tis for me to wait.
And yet forgive me if, rebelling never,
I so shall miss not merely fields withdrawn,
Fields and the surge and business of the streets—
Perhaps some over-zeal deserved this loss—
But most I so shall miss the kindly eye
And the brave, answering look of comrades, men
Dear to me, who so long have stood with me
Through desperate battle in the grappling war
'Gainst infidelity and wretchedness.

O I may clasp their hands, but no more see them
Till in some final rapture of the saved!
I so shall miss the faces bright upturned
In anxious human hunger for the word,
That would enkindle me like prophets old;
I shall no more direct, or cheer or fire,
I must be guided slowly now and pitied,
Feel for the place where I must stand to speak.
I fear too lest with blindness I may lose
That humour which at times hath won me souls;
Not the cold wit of devils, but warm laughter,
To see doth aid us, if we would awaken.
And yet perhaps, as thou didst Milton blind,
That he might see more clearly Heaven and Hell,
Thou art preparing me some other path
To rescue, to redress and to redeem.
Dark are Thy ways, then dark this way with me.
I know, although I pry not, that on me
Shall stream at last the effulgence of Thy day.