Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.
The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, no sickened because of her pain.
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to a body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game.
Proud SongstersThe thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushesPipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.
Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.
—I speak as one who plumbs Life’s dim profound, One who at length can sound Clear views and certain. But—after love what comes? A scene that lours, A few sad vacant hours, And then, the Curtain.
Firm the whole fabric stood,Or seemed to stand, and soundAs it had stood before.But nothing backward climbs,And when I looked aroundAs at the former times,There was Life—pale and hoar;And slow it said to me,‘Twice-over cannot be!
Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.