My Psalm

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1. I mourn no more my vanished years
2. Beneath a tender rain,
3. An April rain of smiles and tears,
4. My heart is young again.
5.  
6. The west-winds blow, and, singing low,
7. I hear the glad streams run;
8. The windows of my soul I throw
9. Wide open to the sun.
10.  
11. No longer forward nor behind
12. I look in hope or fear;
13. But, grateful, take the good I find,
14. The best of now and here.
15.  
16. I plough no more a desert land,
17. To harvest weed and tare;
18. The manna dropping from God's hand
19. Rebukes my painful care.
20.  
21. I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
22. Aside the toiling oar;
23. The angel sought so far away
24. I welcome at my door.
25.  
26. The airs of spring may never play
27. Among the ripening corn,
28. Nor freshness of the flowers of May
29. Blow through the autumn morn.
30.  
31. Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look
32. Through fringed lids to heaven,
33. And the pale aster in the brook
34. Shall see its image given;--
35.  
36. The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
37. The south-wind softly sigh,
38. And sweet, calm days in golden haze
39. Melt down the amber sky.
40.  
41. Not less shall manly deed and word
42. Rebuke an age of wrong;
43. The graven flowers that wreathe the sword
44. Make not the blade less strong.
45.  
46. But smiting hands shall learn to heal,--
47. To build as to destroy;
48. Nor less my heart for others feel
49. That I the more enjoy.
50.  
51. All as God wills, who wisely heeds
52. To give or to withhold,
53. And knoweth more of all my needs
54. Than all my prayers have told.
55.  
56. Enough that blessings undeserved
57. Have marked my erring track;
58. That wheresoe'er my feet have swerved,
59. His chastening turned me back;
60.  
61. That more and more a Providence
62. Of love is understood,
63. Making the springs of time and sense
64. Sweet with eternal good;--
65.  
66. That death seems but a covered way
67. Which opens into light,
68. Wherein no blinded child can stray
69. Beyond the Father's sight;
70.  
71. That care and trial seem at last,
72. Through Memory's sunset air,
73. Like mountain-ranges overpast,
74. In purple distance fair;
75.  
76. That all the jarring notes of life
77. Seem blending in a psalm,
78. And all the angles of its strife
79. Slow rounding into calm.
80.  
81. And so the shadows fall apart,
82. And so the west-winds play;
83. And all the windows of my heart
84. I open to the day.
85.  
86. 1859.