Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

There’ll Come a Day

By Margaret Junkin Preston (1820–1897)

THERE’LL come a day when the supremest splendor

Of earth, or sky, or sea,

Whate’er their miracles, sublime or tender,

Will wake no joy in me.

There’ll come a day when all the aspiration,

Now with such fervor fraught

As lifts to heights of breathless exaltation,

Will seem a thing of naught.

There’ll come a day when riches, honor, glory,

Music and song and art,

Will look like puppets in a worn-out story,

Where each has played his part.

There’ll come a day when human love, the sweetest

Gift that includes the whole

Of God’s grand giving—sovereignest, completest—

Shall fail to fill my soul.

There’ll come a day—I shall not care how passes

The cloud across my sight,

If only, lark-like, from earth’s nested grasses,

I spring to meet its light.