| DO GAY hearts come from sadness?
Is life a flirtant dream? From all our grief can gladness Now crown the anguished scene? Dare we in human weakness Outride the troubled sea, Where in our bosom surges Sorrows no eye can see? Can memory forget it___ The past with sacred vows, Determined as the heavens, Despite this world of woes? Can surging storms of sorrows Thus pass as wind away, And leave the waters quiet Where storms had rent their way? Can human forms we cherish, We love more dear than life, Fade into faint, dim shadows, E'en in a world of strife'.) Can things we once called beauty Lose all their charming power, And seem as vain, deceitful, And fleeting as the hour? If so I have not felt it, Nor feel as others feel; For in my meditation Old sorrows cannot heal. The past, as true old pictures, In turn pass through my brain; And oft I gaze upon them, In pleasure and in pain. Forget? ah! no, no never; The past, those fertile hours, Hath given as my portion Of earth's sweet blooming flowers! I'll e'er recall the visage, Which truly is my own; Because what mem'ry gives me No power can e'er dethrone. While some light minds are wayward, And float on every wind, Yet deep within the waters I'd slowly float behind. Thus deep and still my wooing My anxious soul would run; And cherish dreams supernal Only on earth begun. While ne'er the light and frivol, The transient things of time, Erase the recollections My soul would dare combine. In death more bright than ever, On mem'ry's wall will hang The past in pleasing beauty, Events sublime and grand. __James A. DeMoss |
Kansas Zephyrs
James A. DeMoss
(Thayer, Kansas: ___. 1892)
Pages 34-35
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