Poem by Alexander Anderson

The Worship of Sorrow

HE who, in his young sweet life-time,
    When his heart with its visions was rife,
Hath felt not the worship of sorrow
    Lapping round the shores of that life:

Goes out to the toil of his fellows
    With no share in their hopes or their fears;
And can only stand at a distance
    And see them weep their tears.

Nor hath he found out in the night-time,
    When his heart and himself were alone,
That each wondrous chord in their bosom
    Was an unseen link to his own,

And that every yearning within them,
    The manifold aim and desire,
Came along that link, as the message
    Is spoken in shocks through the wire.

It was thus in that past existence,
    With its purposeless unrest,
When the infinite nature of sorrow
    Was clasping me breast to breast.

And I stood in the dim, hush'd twilight,
    While the rising tears made me blind,
As within, like a rain-quicken'd streamlet;
    Rose the hopes and fears of my kind.

I am now in my bearded manhood,
    And the finer perceptions then
Have roughen'd and dull'd in their feelings,
    Since I stood with my shoulder to men.

But still at stray times, when the labour
    And fret of the day is o'er,
That early worship comes backward,
    As a wave returns to the shore.

It comes when I stand in the silence
    On the bridge at the head of the town,
With the streamlet running beneath me,
    And the stars above looking down.

But most when I go to the city,
    And see upon either side
The restless hurry of faces
    That come and go like the tide.

For I know that each one in his bosom,
    Amid the toil and the din,
Has a goal set out in the future
    Which he braces himself to will.

And I also know, ere the struggle
    And the life-long conflict be o'er,
He must enter this temple of sorrow,
    And worship, weary and sore.

For this mystical life around us,
    Like the earth, with its day and night,
Is a hope and a fear and a sorrow,
    Till we enter the purer light.

1. The Open Secret
2. In Rome
3. Look to the East
4. John Keats
5. Agnes Died

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