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PARABLES.
“Hold every mortal joy
With a loose hand.”
- WE clutch our joys as children do their flowers;
- We look at them, but scarce believe them ours,
- Till our hot palms have smirched their colors rare
- And crushed their dewy beauty unaware.
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- But the wise Gardener, whose they were, comes by
- At hours when we expect not, and with eye
- Mournful yet sweet, compassionate though stern,
- Takes them.
- Then in a moment we discern
- By loss, what was possession, and, half‐wild
- With misery, cry out like angry child:
- “O cruel! thus to snatch my posy fine!”
- He answers tenderly, “Not thine, but mine,”
- And points to those stained fingers which do prove
- Our fatal cherishing, our dangerous love;
- At which we, chidden, a pale silence keep;
- Yet evermore must weep, and weep, and weep.
- So on through gloomy ways and thorny brakes,
- Quiet and slow, our shrinking feet he takes
- Let by the soilèd hand, which, laved in tears,
- More and more clean beneath his sight appears.
- At length the heavy eyes with patience shine—
- “I am content. Thou took’st but what was thine.”
- And then he us his beauteous garden shows,
- Where bountiful the Rose of Sharon grows:’
- Where in the breezes opening spice‐buds swell,
- And the pomegranates yield a pleasant smell:
- While to and fro peace‐sandalled angels move
- In the pure air that they—not we—call Love:
- An air so rare and fine, our grosser breath
- Cannot inhale till purified by death.
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- And thus we, struck with longing joy, adore,
- And, satisfied, wait mute without the door,
- Until the gracious Gardener maketh sign,
- “Enter in peace. All this is mine—and thine.”
