Two Octaves

Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms

All outward recognition of revealed

And righteous omnipresence are the days

Of most of us affrighted and diseased,

But rather by the common snarls of life

That come to test us and to strengthen us

In this the prentice-age of discontent,

Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame.

When through hot fog the fulgid sun looks down

Upon a stagnant earth where listless men

Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat,

Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, —

It seems to me somehow that God himself

Scans with a close reproach what I have done,

Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears,

And fathoms my unprofitable thoughts.