My Psalm. By John G. Whittier
I mourn no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,—
An April rain of smiles and tears,—
My heart is young again.
The west winds blow, and, singing low,
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
No longer forward nor behind
I look in hope or fear;
But, grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now and here.
I plough no more a desert land,
To harvest weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God’s hand
Rebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away,
I welcome at my door.
The airs of Spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the Autumn morn;—
Yet shall the blue-eyed Gentian look
Through fringèd lids to Heaven,
And the pale Aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;—
The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south-wind softly sigh;
And sweet, calm days, in golden haze,
Melt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong;
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
Make not the blade less strong.
But smiting hands shall learn to heal,
To build, as to destroy;
Nor less my heart for others feel,
That I the more enjoy.
All as God wills, who wisely heeds
To give or to withhold,
And knoweth more of all my needs
Than all my prayers have told.
Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track,—
That, wheresoe’er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back,—
That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good,—
That death seems but a covered way
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father’s sight,—
That care and trial seem at last,
Through Memory’s sunset air,
Like mountain-ranges, overpast,
In purple distance fair,—
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west winds play;
And all the windows of my heart
I open to the day.
Over the winter glaciers,
I see the summer glow,
And, through the wild piled snow-drift,
The warm rosebuds below.
R. W. Emerson.