Searching

These quiet Autumn days,
My soul, like Noah’s dove, on airy wings
Goes out and searches for the hidden things
Beyond the hills of haze.

With mournful, pleading cries,
Above the waters of the voiceless sea
That laps the shore of broad Eternity,
Day after day, it flies,

Searching, but all in vain,
For some stray leaf that it may light upon,
And read the future, as the days agone—
Its pleasures, and its pain.

Listening patiently
For some voice speaking from the mighty deep,
Revealing all the things that it doth keep
In secret there for me.

Come back and wait, my soul!
Day after day thy search has been in vain.
Voiceless and silent o’er the future’s plain
Its mystic waters roll.

God, seeing, knoweth best,
And in His time the waters shall subside,
And thou shalt know what lies beneath the tide.
Then wait, my soul, and rest.