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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  “I Count my Time by Times that I meet Thee”

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

“I Count my Time by Times that I meet Thee”

By Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909)

I COUNT my time by times that I meet thee;

These are my yesterdays, my morrows, noons

And nights; these my old moons and my new moons.

Slow fly the hours, or fast the hours do flee,

If thou art far from or art near to me:

If thou art far, the birds’ tunes are no tunes;

If thou art near, the wintry days are Junes,—

Darkness is light, and sorrow cannot be.

Thou art my dream come true, and thou my dream,

The air I breathe, the world wherein I dwell;

My journey’s end thou art, and thou the way;

Thou art what I would be, yet only seem;

Thou art my heaven and thou art my hell;

Thou art my ever-living judgment day.