George Willis Cooke, comp. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology. 1903.
All ’s WellDavid Atwood Wasson (1823–1887)
S
Foretold not half life’s good to me;
Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force
To show how sweet it is to be!
Thy witching dream
And pictured scheme
To match the fact still want the power;
Thy promise brave
From birth to grave
Life’s bloom may beggar in an hour.
Yet what to plead for know I not;
For Wish is worsted, Hope o’ersped,
And aye to thanks returns my thought.
If I would pray,
I ’ve naught to say
But this, that God may be God still,
For Him to live
Is still to give,
And sweeter than my wish His will.
Eternity each moment given!
What plummet may the Present sound?
Who promises a future heaven?
Or glad, or grieved,
Oppressed, relieved,
In blackest night, or brightest day,
Still pours the flood
Of golden good,
And more than heart-full fills me aye.
No petty province, but the whole;
What ’s mine alone is mine far less
Than treasure shared by every soul.
Talk not of store
Millions or more,—
Of values which the purse may hold,—
But this divine!
I own the mine
Whose grains outweigh a planet’s gold.
In every beam that fills the day;
All hearts of men my coffers are,
My ores arterial tides convey;
The fields, the skies,
The sweet replies
Of thought to thought are my gold-dust,—
The oaks, the brooks,
And speaking looks
Of lovers’ faith and friendship’s trust.
For him who lives above all years,
Who all-immortal makes the Now,
And is not ta’en in Time’s arrears;
His life ’s a hymn
The seraphim
Might hark to hear or help to sing,
And to his soul
The boundless whole
Its bounty all doth daily bring.
“The wealth I am, must thou become;
Richer and richer, breath by breath,—
Immortal gain, immortal room!”
And since all his
Mine also is,
Life’s gift outruns my fancies far,
And drowns the dream
In larger stream,
As morning drinks the morning-star.