C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Sorrow

UPON my lips she laid her touch divine,

And merry speech and careless laughter died;

She fixed her melancholy eyes on mine,

And would not be denied.

I saw the West Wind loose his cloudlets white

In flocks, careering through the April sky;

I could not sing, though joy was at its height,

For she stood silent by.

I watched the lovely evening fade away;

A mist was lightly drawn across the stars:

She broke my quiet dream,—I heard her say,

“Behold your prison bars!

“Earth’s gladness shall not satisfy your soul;

This beauty of the world in which you live,

The crowning grace that sanctifies the whole,—

That, I alone can give.”

I heard, and shrank away from her afraid:

But still she held me, and would still abide;

Youth’s bounding pulses slackened and obeyed,

With slowly ebbing tide.

“Look thou beyond the evening star,” she said,

“Beyond the changing splendors of the day;

Accept the pain, the weariness, the dread,—

Accept, and bid me stay!”

I turned and clasped her close with sudden strength;

And slowly, sweetly, I became aware

Within my arms God’s angel stood at length,

White-robed and calm and fair.

And now I look beyond the evening star,

Beyond the changing splendors of the day,—

Knowing the pain He sends more precious far,

More beautiful than they.