Classic Poem

I.

B UT how shall we be glad?
We that are journeying through a vale of tears,
Encompassed with a thousand woes and fears,
How should we not be sad?

II.

Angels, that ever stand
Within the presence chamber, and there raise
The never-interrupted hymn of praise,
May welcome this command:

III.

Or they whose strife is o'er,
Who all their weary length of life have trod,
As pillars now within the temple of God,
That shall go out no more.

IV.

But we who wander here,
We that are exiled in this gloomy place,
Still doomed to water Earth's unthankful face
With many a bitter tear —

V.

Bid us lament and mourn,
Bid us that we go mourning all the day,
And we will find it easy to obey,
Of our best things forlorn;

VI.

But not that we be glad;
If it he true the mourners are the blest,
Oh, leave us in a world of sin, unrest,
And trouble, to be sad!

VII.

I spake, and thought to weep —
For sin and sorrow, suffering and crime,
That fill the world, all mine appointed time
A settled grief to keep.

VIII.

When lo! as day from night,
As day from out the womb of night forlorn,
So from that sorrow was that gladness born,
Even in mine own despite.

IX.

Yet was not that by this
Excluded — at the coming of that joy
Fled not that grief — nor did that grief destroy
The newly-risen bliss:

X.

But side by side they flow,
Two fountains flowing from one smitten heart,
And ofttimes scarcely to be known apart —
That gladness and that wo:

XI.

Two fountains from one source,
Or which from two such neighboring sources run,
That aye for him who shall unseal the one,
The other flows perforce.

XII.

And both are sweet and calm,
Fair flowers upon the banks of either blow,
Both fertilize the soil, and where they flow
Shed round them holy balm.