The Truth Teller lifts the curtain,
And shows us the people’s plight;
And everything seems uncertain,
And nothing at all looks right.
Yet out of the blackness groping,
My heart finds a world in bloom;
For it somehow is fashioned for hoping,
And it cannot live in the gloom.
He tells us from border to border,
That race is warring with race;
With riot and mad disorder,
The earth is a wretched place;
And yet ere the sun is setting
I am thinking of peace, not strife;
For my heart has a way of forgetting
All things save the joy of life.
I heard in my Youth’s beginning
That earth was a region of woe,
And trouble, and sorrow, and sinning:
The Truth Teller told me so.
I knew it was true, and tragic;
And I mourned over much that was wrong;
And then, by some curious magic,
The heart of me burst into song.
The years have been going, going,
A mixture of pleasure and pain;
But the Truth Teller’s books are showing
That evil is on the gain.
And I know that I ought to be grieving,
And I should be too sad to sing;
But somehow I keep on believing
That life is a glorious thing.
JUST YOU
All the selfish joys of earth,
I am getting through.
That which used to lure and lead
Now I pass and give no heed;
Only one thing seems of worth—
Just you.
Not for me the lonely height,
And the larger view;
Lowlier ways seem fair and wide,
While we wander side by side.
One thing makes the whole world bright—
Just you.
Not for distant goals I run,
No great aim pursue;
Most of earth’s ambitions seem
Like the shadow of a dream.
All the world to me means one—
Just you.
REFLECTION
Twice have I seen God’s full reflected grace.
Once when the wailing of a child at birth
Proclaimed another soul had come to earth,
That look shone on, and through the mother’s face.