Then what is the happiest memory?
Is it the foe’s defeat?
Is it the splendid praise of a world
That thunders by at your feet?
Nay, nay, to the life-worn spirit
The happiest thoughts are those
That carry us back to the simple joys
And the sweetness of life’s repose.
A simple love and a simple trust
And a simple duty done
Are truer torches to light to death
Than a whole world’s victories won.
The Tree of Truth
There grows a mighty centuried tree,
Its roots athwart the world,
Its branches wide as earth’s wide girth
By thousand dews impearled.
Its top is hoary, its wide boughs
Reach out to heaven above,
Its roots are knowledge, and its sap
The yearning heart of love.
Men hack its branches, curb its roots,
To trim it to their ken,
Or hide its green in poisonous vines
From evil’s grimmest fen.
But evermore while ages wane,
And centuries rise and die,
Through dark, through light, through good and ill,
Its saps the years defy.