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| TEARS wash away the atoms in the eye | |
| That smarted for a day; | |
| Rain-clouds that spoiled the splendors of the sky | |
| The fields with flowers array. | |
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| No chamber of pain but has some hidden door | 5 |
| That promises release; | |
| No solitude so drear but yields its store | |
| Of thought and inward peace. | |
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| No night so wild but brings the constant sun | |
| With love and power untold; | 10 |
| No time so dark but through its woof there run | |
| Some blessèd threads of gold. | |
| |
| And through the long and storm-tost centuries burn | |
| In changing calm and strife | |
| The Pharos-lights of truth, where’er we turn,— | 15 |
| The unquenched lamps of life. | |
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| O Love supreme! O Providence divine! | |
| What self-adjusting springs | |
| Of law and life, what even scales, are thine, | |
| What sure-returning wings | 20 |
| |
| Of hopes and joys, that flit like birds away, | |
| When chilling autumn blows, | |
| But come again, long ere the buds of May | |
| Their rosy lips unclose! | |
| |
| What wondrous play of mood and accident | 25 |
| Through shifting days and years; | |
| What fresh returns of vigor overspent | |
| In feverish dreams and fears! | |
| |
| What wholesome air of conscience and of thought | |
| When doubts and forms oppress; | 30 |
| What vistas opening to the gates we sought | |
| Beyond the wilderness; | |
| |
| Beyond the narrow cells, where self-involved, | |
| Like chrysalids, we wait | |
| The unknown births, the mysteries unsolved | 35 |
| Of death and change and fate! | |
| |
| O Light divine! we need no fuller test | |
| That all is ordered well; | |
| We know enough to trust that all is best | |
| Where love and wisdom dwell. | 40 |
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