Classic Poem

One evening when daylight was dying,
And the stars glimmered — embers of day —
In a seat by the half open window
I mused over years gone away.
I dwelt among beautiful shadows —
Part sleeping and partly awake —
That rose from an ocean of fancy
Like mists from a quiet lake.

In my age I but dream of the buried,
The unborn was the dream of my youth,
But my dreams are now none the less pleasant
Because they are founded on truth.
For the sadness of truth is about them,
And the sweetness of sadness is best;
The sadness that follows our troubles
Leaves sweetness distilled in the breast.

Than the others, one fancy more pleased me
As I sat in the solitude then,
For it mingled the here and hereafter
Uniting the angels with men.
A page of the scriptural story
Was blent with the life that I knew,
Presenting a vision I wept for
When it vanished away from my view.

A ladder of memory lifted
From earth to the far-away clime,
Whence a glimpse of the glory of goodness
Shone out on the darkness of time.
On the stairway an army of angels
Came softly and solemnly down,
Whom I knew, when they gathered beside me,
Had suffered the cross for the crown.

There was many a fervently loved one
Had left me in trouble and tears,
There were some I had almost forgotten
In the thronging of wearisome cares;
Yet none of them knew I was near them,
Though some of them uttered my name;
Though evil may recognise goodness,
Good knoweth no evil or shame.

The ladder grew dim in the sunset,
And the fantasy faded away,
I awoke to the life that is closing
So soon to be dead, like the day.
But I know there is ever remaining
Some light of the love that has dawned,
To lead through the valley of shadow
Out into the Beulah beyond.