Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE WHOLE CREATION GROANETH, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL Poet's Biography First Line: Art glad with the gladness of youth in thy veins Last Line: The colors that read us its meaning aright. Subject(s): Aging; Pain; Youth; Suffering; Misery | ||||||||
ART glad with the gladness of youth in thy veins, In thy hands, for the spending, earth's joy and its gains? Lo! winged with storm shadows the torturers come, And to-night, or to-morrow, thy lips shall be dumb, Thy hands wet with pain-thrills, thy nerves, that were strung To fineness of sense by earth's pleasure, be wrung With pangs the beast knows not, nor he who in tents Lives lone in the desert, and knoweth not whence The bread of the morrow. Pain like to a mist Goeth up from the earth, and is lost, and none wist Why ever it cometh, why ever it waits In the heart of our loves, like a foe in our gates. Lo! summer and sunshine are over the land, Who marshalled yon billows? what wind of command Drives ever their merciless march on the strand? Thus, dateless, relentless, the children of strife None have seen, on the sun-lighted beaches of life March ever the ravening billows of pain. O heart that is breaking, go ask of the brain If aught of God's spending is squandered in vain? Yea, where is the sunshine of centuries dead? Yea, where are the raindrops of yesterday shed? God findeth anew his lost light in the force That holdeth the world on its resolute course, And surely, as surely the madness of pain Shall pass into wisdom, and come back again An angel of courage if thou art the one That knoweth to deal with the lightnings that stun To blindness the many. A thousand shall fall By the waysides of life, and in helplessness call For the death-alms which nature gives freely to all; And one, like the jewel, shall break the fierce light That blindeth thy vision, and flash through the night The colors that read us its meaning aright. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PARTHENOPHIL AND PARTHENOPHE: MADRIGAL 14 by BARNABE BARNES SONNETS IN SHADOWS: 1 by ARLO BATES IN PRAISE OF PAIN by HEATHER MCHUGH THE SYMPATIZERS by JOSEPHINE MILES LEEK STREET by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR A DECANTER OF MADEIRA, AGED 86, TO GEORGE BANCROFT, AGED 86 by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL HOW THE CUMBERLAND WENT DOWN [MARCH 8, 1862] by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL |
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