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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  Sunlight and Starlight

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Sunlight and Starlight

By Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824–1906)

[Born in Boston, Mass., 1824. Died at Milton, Mass., 1906. From Pansies. 1872.]

GOD sets some souls in shade, alone;

They have no daylight of their own:

Only in lives of happier ones

They see the shine of distant suns.

God knows. Content thee with thy night,

Thy greater heaven hath grander light.

To-day is close; the hours are small;

Thou sit’st afar, and hast them all.

Lose the less joy that doth but blind;

Reach forth a larger bliss to find.

To-day is brief: the inclusive spheres

Rain raptures of a thousand years.