Not Understood and Other Poems/Away With Regret

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Not Understood and Other Poems (1908)
by Thomas Bracken
Away With Regret
4621572Not Understood and Other Poems — Away With Regret1908Thomas Bracken

AWAY WITH REGRET.

To W.E.

AWAY with regret; though some words lightly spoken
  Were echoes of hopes which we cannot recall;
The lily will bloom, though a petal be broken;
The rose does not droop, though a leaflet may fall;
The sun that illumined love’s dreamings’ ideal,
  At eve, ’neath a shroud of despair may have set,
But morning will bring him in Majesty real,
  To melt with his rays all the clouds of regret.

Away with regret, and away with dejection!
  Though withered are some of the young buds of love,
Bright flow’rets of far more enduring affection
  Will blossom when Spring brings new notes to the dove;
The seedlings we cast on a cold soil may perish;
  We lose them, but still it is foolish to fret.
The next time we sow, let fertility cherish
  The heart’s ease we prize’then away with regret!

Away with regret! when the heart lies in fallow,
  ’Tis but a coarse weed that spreads over the ground;
It only takes root where the surface is shallow,
  And dies when the summer of love comes around.
’Tis vain to look back, for the past we can’t alter;
  The future remains in our own keeping yet;
Hope’s goal is before us, and why should we falter?
  We’re marching to God then away with regret!