MY HEAVEN
Unhoused in deserts of accepted thought,
And lost in jungles of confusing creeds,
My soul strayed, homeless, finding its own needs
Unsatisfied with what tradition taught.
The pros and cons, the little ifs and ands,
The but and maybe, and the this and that,
On which the churches thicken and grow fat,
I found but structures built on shifting sands.
And all their heavens were strange and far away,
And all their hells were made of human hate;
And since for death I did not care to wait,
A heaven I fashioned for myself one day.
Of happy thoughts I built it stone by stone,
With joy of life I draped each spacious room,
With love’s great light I drove away all gloom,
And in the centre I made God a throne.
And this dear heaven I set within my heart,
And carried it about with me alway,
And then the changing dogmas of the day
Seemed alien to my thoughts and held no part.
Now as I take my heaven from place to place
I find new rooms by love’s revealing light,
And death will give me but a larger sight
To see my palace spreading into space.
LIFE
On a bleak, bald hill with a dull world under,
The dreary world of the Commonplace,
I have stood when the whole world seemed a blunder
Of dotard Time, in an aimless race.
With worry about me and want before me—
Yet deep in my soul was a rapture spring
That made me cry to the grey sky o’er me:
‘Oh, I know this life is a goodly thing!’
I have given sweet years to a thankless duty
While cold and starving, though clothed and fed,
For a young heart’s hunger for joy and beauty
Is harder to bear than the need of bread.
I have watched the wane of a sodden season,
Which let hope wither, and made care thrive,
And through it all, without earthly reason,
I have thrilled with the glory of being alive.