Summit And Vale
The light hangs over the mountain top,
But gray and misty the plain;
The sun’s a-glow in eternal snow,
But down in the valley, the rain.
And life is so, the sun a-glow
On the mountains far, while the rain’s below.
I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.
Farewell, sweetheart, and again farewell;
To day we part, and who can tell
If we shall e’er again
Meet, and with clasped hands
Renew our vows of love, and forget
The sad, dull pain.
What though the rain be falling chill and gray,
A ceaseless dripping from the sad, brown caves?
A tiny bird is singing cross the way.
Beneath the friendly shelter of the leaves.