Tag: Sonnet

Swelling burdens have made our hearts colder,
Harder is the mind that becomes older,
Bitter are the years that keep on flowing,
Darker the despair that keeps on growing.
Fortunes or the vainer Powers That Be
Have pushed our souls to each extremity;
Our lives have inverted each dream we dreamed
Into the opposite of what they seemed.

But through it all, oh, dearest friend of mine,
In one way bested were the hands of Time:
No word or action, great or small, signifies
This presence of Hope that most love denies,
It lasts as better parts of you and me,
In some better part of eternity.

The sky has so many stars that its face
E’en in the dark of night appears bright!
Each ribbony ray seems inclined to race
Toward earth, as though it requires the light.

It does not.

Man as aged long, to the time
He can’t see himself as part of the sky,
Of the dust, or anything sublime,
He has answered the “how?” (But failed the “why?”).

If he could, for a while, shun the glory,
The power, the wealth, the pride, the fame,
And but hear the stars’ lighted, bright story,
He shall be of Nature and need no name.

But the mind of man has evolved to think,
While his idle heart to nothingness does sink.

15th March.