Classic Poem

When all the years are but a year
Fast drawing to a close,
And I am through with cruising here
Forever, I suppose,
Then upward to the final cross
The last hill I shall climb
And stand before the mighty Boss
Who figures up our time.

He gave me once a world to cruise,
He staked me to a life,
And left me my own way to choose,
A path of peace or strife.
Across the sky He spread His stars,
The sun to travel by,
His great unchanging calendars
For pilgrims such as I.

But there are things He never knew
In this great world of His:
The heavens are not always blue —
The hurricane there is,
And nights without a star to shine
There are, and sudden snares,
And tangled ways, and trailing vines,
To take men unawares.

And, if He knew it all the while,
That things like these are here,
The pitfall in the pleasant mile,
The gray skies with the clear,
He knows that I for every rose
Was punished with a thorn,
For every passion red He knows
Some burden I have borne.

I did not make a woman's eyes,
I did not make the brew,
I did not make the sweetest lies
Man ever listened to.
I did not make the greed of gold,
And all of human ills —
When I was young these things were old
As His eternal hills.

I think He takes men in His hand,
I and all mortal men,
I think that He can understand
And balance things again,
I think He weighs a man beside
The sort of chance he had,
I think He knows His world is wide,
A good world and a bad.

I think He knows it all along
When figuring our time,
And scratches off the little wrong
The holy call a crime;
I think that when life's year is past,
However feet may fail,
That He will lead me home at last,
Although I missed the trail.