Page:The Garden of Years.djvu/34



Yet are some hours by rapture made so bright

That the sense reels before the blinding blaze

Of an effulgent radiancy, that might,

Spread through a lifetime, shed the steady light

Of calm content on twice ten thousand days.

Ah, if the jealous future would but raise

These, like white beacons on a sad sea thrown,

How patient we should be of life’s delays

That seem denials! Ah, love, had I but known

All my life long the will of Fate to-night!

Close was your secret guarded, empty years!

No far horizon ever hid so well

The dreamt-of harbors of imagined spheres

From the strained eyes of ocean’s pioneers,

Until the appointed dawn from swell to swell

Leaped, and decreed discovery befel.

Had I but known, how different all had been!

To-day—to-day of which you would not tell—

Had lain upon my heart like the unseen

Familiar green of shores their native nears.