Classic Poem

 The old doubts confront the soul
To-day that man has had to face
In every age, in every place:
 We, knowing a part, still yearn to know the wind.

 Sometimes a mother dies:
For her the eternal rest is won
While still youth's bright glad sun
 Gleams through her daughter's eyes.

 In heaven how shall it be:
The daughter lives on year by year:
The end seems not more near;
 Life's river finds not yet the shoreless sea.

 The varying days go by:
Some hours are glad with sunniest light,
Some dark with deepest night;
 Glad, dark, the countless hours are born and die.

 But still the mother waits—
The daughter's hair grows grey;
 No light yet flashes from the solemn gates
Through which the mother's form was borne away.

Where shall they meet and how?
 The daughter now
 Is altered, worn and old:
The hair the mother stroked was sunniest gold.

How will the mother recognise
 The changed dim eyes?
For time has stolen the light, the glow,
 That filled them long ago!

How shall I , mother, being a son,
 If thou art quite transformed to youth again,
Endorse the work by heavenly magic done,—
 Save only with unutterable pain?