Poem by Alfred Noyes

The Optimist

Teach me to live and to forgive
  The death that all must die
Who pass in slumber through this heaven
  Of earth and sea and sky;

Who live by grace of Time and Space
  At which their peace is priced;
And cast their lots upon the robe
  That wraps the cosmic Christ;

Who cannot see the world-wide Tree
  Where Love lies bleeding still;
This universal cross of God
  Our star-crowned Igdrasil.

Teach me to live; I do not ask
  For length of earthly days,
Or that my heaven-appointed task
  Should fall in pleasant ways;

If in this hour of warmth and light
  The last great knell were knolled;
If Death should close mine eyes to-night
  And all the tale be told;

While I have lips to speak or sing
  And power to draw this breath,
Shall I not praise my Lord and King
  Above all else, for death?

When on a golden eve he drove
  His keenest sorrow deep
Deep in my heart, and called it love;
  I did not wince or weep.

A wild Hosanna shook the world
  And wakened all the sky,
As through a white and burning light
  Her passionate face went by.

When on a golden dawn he called
  My best beloved away,
I did not shrink or stand appalled
  Before the hopeless day.

The joy of that triumphant dearth
  And anguish cannot die;
The joy that casts aside this earth
  For immortality.

I would not change one word of doom
  Upon the dreadful scroll,
That gave her body to the tomb
  And freed her fettered soul.

For now each idle breeze can bring
  The kiss I never seek;
The nightingale has heard her sing,
  The rose caressed her cheek.

And every pang of every grief
  That ruled my soul an hour,
Has given new splendours to the leaf,
  New glories to the flower;

And melting earth into the heaven
  Whose inmost heart is pain,
Has drawn the veils apart and given
  Her soul to mine again.

1. The Escape of the Old Grey Squirrel
2. Necromancy
3. Song of the Wooden-Legged Fiddler
4. Earth-Bound
5. Fishers of Men

Ella Wilcox The Optimist ("The fields were bleak and sodden. Not a wing")

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