THE TRUTH TELLER

The Truth Teller lifts the curtain,

And shows us the people's plight;

And everything seems uncertain,

And nothing at all looks right.

Yet out of the blackness groping,

My heart finds a world in bloom;

For it somehow is fashioned for hoping,

And it cannot live in the gloom.

He tells us from border to border,

That race is warring with race;

With riot and mad disorder,

The earth is a wretched place;

And yet ere the sun is setting

I am thinking of peace, not strife;

For my heart has a way of forgetting

All things save the joy of life.

I heard in my Youth's beginning

That earth was a region of woe,

And trouble, and sorrow, and sinning:

The Truth Teller told me so.

I knew it was true, and tragic;

And I mourned over much that was wrong;

And then, by some curious magic,

The heart of me burst into song.

The years have been going, going,

A mixture of pleasure and pain;

But the Truth Teller's books are showing

That evil is on the gain.

And I know that I ought to be grieving,

And I should be too sad to sing;

But somehow I keep on believing

That life is a glorious thing.