Lewis Morris

Loss and Gain

FROM day to day, from year to year,
New waves of change assail us here ;
Each day, each year, prolongs the chain
Where pleasure alternates with pain.

New earth-born exhalations rise,
To hide the heavens from our eyes;
New clouds obscure the vision fair,
Which once was round us everywhere.

New precious obligations come,
New sanctities of love and home,
New tender hopes, new anxious fears,
And sweet experiences of tears.

Old tastes are lost, old thoughts grow strange,
Old longings gradually change,
Old faiths seem no more dear or true,
Lost in the full light of the new.

Youth's boundless aspirations fled,
And every wild ambition dead;
Love not a meteor blinding sight,
But a pure ray of sober light.

And for the passionate self of old,
A deep affection, calm, not cold;
A pitying love serenely kind,
A broader trust, a juster mind,

A faith which occupies the heart,
Tho' the brain halts to bear its part,
Which threat and promise fail to move,
Like the dim consciousness of love.

Tho' much be taken, much is left,
Not all forsaken nor bereft;
From change on change we come to rest,
And the last moment is the best.