Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete

MY PSALM.

     I mourn no more my vanished years
     Beneath a tender rain,
     An April rain of smiles and tears,
     My heart is young again.

     The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
     I hear the glad streams run;
     The windows of my soul I throw
     Wide open to the sun.

     No longer forward nor behind
     I look in hope or fear;
     But, grateful, take the good I find,
     The best of now and here.

     I plough no more a desert land,
     To harvest weed and tare;
     The manna dropping from God's hand
     Rebukes my painful care.

     I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
     Aside the toiling oar;
     The angel sought so far away
     I welcome at my door.

     The airs of spring may never play
     Among the ripening corn,
     Nor freshness of the flowers of May
     Blow through the autumn morn.

     Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
     Through fringed lids to heaven,
     And the pale aster in the brook
     Shall see its image given;—

     The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
     The south-wind softly sigh,
     And sweet, calm days in golden haze
     Melt down the amber sky.

     Not less shall manly deed and word
     Rebuke an age of wrong;
     The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
     Make not the blade less strong.

     But smiting hands shall learn to heal,—
     To build as to destroy;
     Nor less my heart for others feel
     That I the more enjoy.

     All as God wills, who wisely heeds
     To give or to withhold,
     And knoweth more of all my needs
     Than all my prayers have told.

     Enough that blessings undeserved
     Have marked my erring track;
     That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
     His chastening turned me back;

     That more and more a Providence
     Of love is understood,
     Making the springs of time and sense
     Sweet with eternal good;—

     That death seems but a covered way
     Which opens into light,
     Wherein no blinded child can stray
     Beyond the Father's sight;

     That care and trial seem at last,
     Through Memory's sunset air,
     Like mountain-ranges overpast,
     In purple distance fair;

     That all the jarring notes of life
     Seem blending in a psalm,
     And all the angles of its strife
     Slow rounding into calm.

     And so the shadows fall apart,
     And so the west-winds play;
     And all the windows of my heart
     I open to the day.

     1859.