Classic Poem

That once which pained to think of,
Like a promise to oneself not kept
Nor keepable, now is grown mild.
The thistle-patch of memory
Claims our confiding touch;
The naked spurs do not draw blood,
Yielding to stoic pressure
With awkward flexibility.

We are glad it happened so
Which long seemed traitorous to hope,
False to the destined Otherwise;
Since by those failures-of-the-time
We learned the skill of failure, time—
Waiting to hold the seal of truth
With a less eager hand,
Sparing the authentic signature
For the most prudent sanctions,
Lest the wax and ink of faith be used
Before to hope's reverses
Succeed the just realities,
And we be spent of welcome
Save for a withered smile.

The transformation of old grief
Into a present grace of mind
Among the early shadows which
The present light inhabit,
As the portentous universe
Now upon earth descends
Timidly, in nostalgic bands
Of elemental trials and errors:
This is how truth is groved,
With wayside nights where sleeping
We wake to tell what once seemed cruel
As dream-dim—in the dream
As plain and sure as then,
In telling no less dark than doubtful.

This is how pleasure relives history,
Like accusation that at last
Settling unrancorous on lies
Gives kinder names to them—
When truth is so familiar
That the false no more than strange is,
Nor wondrous evil strange
But of a beggar's right to tenderness
Whom once in robes of certainty
We stood upon illusion's stage
And then, to expiate our self-deceit,
Sent forth in honesty's ill rags.