Time's torment...

Time's torment,

Life's woes,

And sorrow's wan gaze

Are but shades

In a picture of light

Where nothing abides,

All things fade.

In fading there is beauty,

By shedding tears

We bathe our hearts —

Those crushed flowers full of smart —

For a deity not far from our souls.

Yet, no solace in prayer,

Pain has no largess;

Dark has stars,

But no barren earth its flowers.

All are dismal and fallow;

Yet, from the mountain's stony heart

Spring multitudinous rivers

Sparkling at dawn, and

Deepening night's gloom with mysterious murmurs;

And who knows?

These streams that pass

By the balcony of our past,

Through present's wilderness,

Into desolate future

May reach the land of the farthest star.

Who knows? Ah! who knows?

May these song-rills

From my heart's little hill

Empty their singing waters

Into a sea of song-making

Where nothing endures

But the sound and echo of singing.

Where sound, and echo are one,

A moonset vale of sunset land,

Where light is wedded to shade

Without death, full of dying, yet not dead.