Classic Poem

At harvest, when the sun shone o'er the wheat,
Standing in shocks in the quiet, pleasant fields,
We, hand in hand, walked through the noonday heat,
Along the land to where the pond lay still,
'Neath water-lilies floating at their will.

And while we walked and spoke of other days,
At harvest, too, before my love and I
Had been made one to walk through this world's ways
As man and wife, until the end shall be,
When life shall live itself eternally.

Her sister, speaking to her, softly said:
“How far,” she asked, “my dear one, have you solved
Life's problem? Well, I mind me ere were wed
Your love and you, you often thought it o'er,
Afraid of darkness on the unseen shore.”

And, as we skirted the sweet, verdant shores,
And drifted near the lilies, spoke no word
My thoughtful wife, and the unmovèd oars
Caught in the branches of the hanging trees
Came from the land the murmuring hum of bees.

“Life is no problem,” said my wife, at last;
“'Tis our own blindness makes us think it one;
For we can read the future by the past.
Has God not kept us? We are anchored here,
Floating, yet anchored—lilies in a mere.”