Children of the Night

Two Octaves

       I

     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.

       II

     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.