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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  A Song of Days

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

A Song of Days

By Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911)

O RADIANT summer day

Whose air, sweet air, steals on from flower to flower,

Could’st thou not yield one hour

When the glad heart says “This alone is May”?

O passionate earthly love

Whose tremulous pulse beats on to life’s best boon,

Could’st thou not give one noon,

One noon of noons, all other bliss above?

O solemn human life

Whose nobler longings bid all conflict cease,

Grant but one day’s deep peace

Beyond the utmost rumor of all strife.

For if no joy can stay,

Let it at least yield one consummate bloom,

Or else there is no room

To find delight in love or life or May.

1887.