Ah, friend, do you recall that afternoon
When first we met? How sad yet sweet it seem’d!
So many kindly sisters with me spake,
And for me prayed, and when the dusk had come,
And hardly any eye but God’s could see,
We knelt before the altar; and I rose,
Content if like that light before the shrine
Within my heart one light alone could burn;
Though all the earth beside might loom as dark
As those chill, shadowy chapels down the aisle.
I felt another life when walking home.
Such conflicts come but seldom; storms of spring,
Uprooting much, and wracking much the soil,
They find it frost-bound, and they leave it green.
Alas, if grain or chaff grow then, depends
Upon the germs their rains have wrought upon.