Poems (Whitney)/Joy

by Anne Whitney

For works with similar titles, see Joy.

JOY.

Gray strength of years!Whereon so many a bark is wrecked;And even successFalls blank and passionless;This morn has deckedYour front with trailing loveliness,And branching lights;Inlets of summer from celestial heights,

Dimpling with light, beneath the long arcades,The shadows smile in sleep:And all those forces manifold that keepSuch infantine, calm play, Before the awful handThat makes and breaks,Sing and are jubilant to-day.Sing on, all up and down the shining land!My heart your meaning takes.

As evening's star on star,Through the blue portals of the air,What countless creatures throng!And beautiful they are—With morning in their eyes and in their hair;And on their lips an antique speech and song.

One shadow only waitsAloof, poised on ascending wing,And lifts no voice; but in her throat,I ween there is a sweeter note.Than all these glorious warblers bring.I hear her chant an inward strain;"Thou sett'st me above Time's annoy: I found delight and it was pain;Thou gavest pain, and it is joy.Token of unaccomplished growth,Stern pledge of immortality;Through all the earth's perplexed domain,Just God! I would that there should beNo living thing that should not suffer Pain."Thus in a ravishmentOf inward sight, her song wells up,A passionate content.

Scatter the road,The beaten highway of the world, my heart,With rose and asphodel,And all thou draw'st from music's throbbing well;Behold how rich thou art!Thou drink'st of every spring of God;Broad heaven but lightly freights thine eye,And thy familiar pulse is rifeWith tumult of the river of life, That makes the circuit of the youngest sky.What thrill that spirits feel,Transport of love, or ecstasyOf still, creative force,That life shall not at last to thee reveal?

O make no barren haste—Thou livest from day to day with God so near!And well may'st brookInto those phantom-eyes to lookThat freeze in these half-lights our atmosphere:—Seeing that thou art basedOn the immortal Joy—whose spreading bloomHath root of substance so divine,That the perennial heavens which by it shine,And spring's sure birth, live only to expressIts strength and everlastingness.