LIFE comes to us only by glimpses; We see it not yet as a whole, For the vapor, the cloud, and the shadow That over it surging roll; For the dimness of mortal vision; That mingles the false with the true: Yet its innermost, fathomless meaning Is never quite hidden from view. The hills lift aloft the glad secret; It is breathed by the whispering leaves; The rivers repeat it in music; The sea with its harmony heaves; The secret of that living gospel Which freshened the veins of the earth, When Love, named in heaven the Redeemer, Was revealed in a human birth. Life shows us its grandeur by glimpses; For what is this wondrous To-Day But a rift in the mist-muffled vastness Of surrounding eternity? One law for this hour and far futures; One light on the distant and near; The bliss of the boundless hereafter Pulses into the brief moments here. The secret of life, -- it is giving; To minister and to serve; Love's law binds the man to the angel, And ruin befalls, if we swerve. There are breadths of celestial horizons Overhanging the commonest way; The clod and the star share the glory, And to breathe is an ecstasy. Life dawns on us, wakes us, by glimpses; In heaven there is opened a door! -- That flash lit up vistas eternal; The dead are the living once more! To illumine the scroll of creation, One swift, sudden vision sufficed: Every riddle of life worth the reading Has found its interpreter -- Christ! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LAND OF COUNTERPANE by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SERENADE by JEAN FRANCOIS VICTOR AICARD SALOME by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE THE NIGHTINGALE THAT WAS DROWNED by PHILIP AYRES RIDDLE by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD CORRESPONDENCES by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE MAN AND WOMAN GO THROUGH THE CANCER WARD by GOTTFRIED BENN |