Song in Time of Waiting.

Because the days are long for you and me,

I make this song to lighten their slow time,

So that the weary waiting fruitful be

Or blossomed only by my limping rhyme.

The days are very long

And may not shortened be by any chime

Of measured words or any fleeting song.

Yet let us gather blossoms while we wait

And sing brave tunes against the face of fate.

Day after day goes by: the exquisite

Procession of the variable year,

Summer, a sheaf with flowers bound up in it,

And autumn, tender till the frosts appear

And dry the humid skies;

And winter following on, aloof, austere,

Clad in the garments of a frore sunrise;

And spring again. May not too many a spring

Make both our voices tremble as we sing!

The days are empty, empty, and the nights

Are cold and void; there is no single gleam

Across the space unpeopled of delights,

Save only now and then some thin-blood dream,

Some stray of summer weather;

The tedious hours like slow-foot laggarts seem,

When you and I, my love, are not together

And when I hold you in my arms at last

The minutes go like April cloudlets past.

And yet no hidden charm, no desperate spell

Can make these minutes longer, those less long:

No force there is that yearning can impel

Against the callous years which do us wrong.

No words, no whispered rune,

No witchery and no Thessalian song

Can make that far-off, misty day more soon.

The bravest tune, the most courageous rhyme

Fall broken from the bastions of time.

A long and dusty road it is to tread;

Few are the wayside flowers and far apart

And are no sooner plucked than withered,

When yearning heart is torn from yearning heart.

A weary road it is

And yet far off I see clear waters start

And clean sweet grass and tangled traceries

Of whispering leaves, that laugh to see us come,

And there one day... one day shall be our home.

The day will come. O dearest, do not doubt!

It is not born as yet but I shall see

Some day the fearless sunrise flashing out

And know the night will give you up to me.

O heart, my heart, be glad,

Because the time will come at last when we

Shall leave all grief and unlearn all things sad

And know the joy than which none sweeter is

And I shall sing a happier song than this.