Poems of Optimism/A Wish

Great dignity ever attends great grief, And silently walks beside it; And I always know when I see such woe That Invisible Helpers guide it. And I know deep sorrow is like a tide, It cannot ever be flowing; The high-water mark in the night and the dark - Then dawn, and the outward going.

But the people who pull at my heart-strings hard Are the ones whom destiny hurries Through commonplace ways to the end of their days, And pesters with paltry worries. The peddlers who trudge with a budget of wares To the door that is slammed unkindly; The vendor who stands with his shop in his hands Where the hastening hosts pass blindly;

The woman who holds in her poor flat purse The price of her rent-room only, While her starved eye feeds on the comfort she needs To brighten the lot that is lonely; The man in the desert of endless work, Unsoftened by islands of leisure; And the children who toil in the dust and the soil, While their little hearts cry for pleasure;

The people who labour, and scrimp, and save, At the call of some thankless duty, And carefully hide, with a mien of pride, Their ravening hunger for beauty; These ask no pity, and seek no aid, But the thought of them somehow is haunting; And I wish I might fling at their feet everything That I know in their hearts they are wanting.