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Home  »  The Poets of Transcendentalism  »  David Atwood Wasson (1823–1887)

George Willis Cooke, comp. The Poets of Transcendentalism: An Anthology. 1903.

All ’s Well

David Atwood Wasson (1823–1887)

SWEET-VOICÈD Hope, thy fine discourse

Foretold not half life’s good to me;

Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force

To show how sweet it is to be!

Thy witching dream

And pictured scheme

To match the fact still want the power;

Thy promise brave

From birth to grave

Life’s bloom may beggar in an hour.

Ask and receive,—’t is sweetly said;

Yet what to plead for know I not;

For Wish is worsted, Hope o’ersped,

And aye to thanks returns my thought.

If I would pray,

I ’ve naught to say

But this, that God may be God still,

For Him to live

Is still to give,

And sweeter than my wish His will.

O wealth of life beyond all bound!

Eternity each moment given!

What plummet may the Present sound?

Who promises a future heaven?

Or glad, or grieved,

Oppressed, relieved,

In blackest night, or brightest day,

Still pours the flood

Of golden good,

And more than heart-full fills me aye.

My wealth is common; I possess

No petty province, but the whole;

What ’s mine alone is mine far less

Than treasure shared by every soul.

Talk not of store

Millions or more,—

Of values which the purse may hold,—

But this divine!

I own the mine

Whose grains outweigh a planet’s gold.

I have a stake in every star,

In every beam that fills the day;

All hearts of men my coffers are,

My ores arterial tides convey;

The fields, the skies,

The sweet replies

Of thought to thought are my gold-dust,—

The oaks, the brooks,

And speaking looks

Of lovers’ faith and friendship’s trust.

Life’s youngest tides joy-brimming flow

For him who lives above all years,

Who all-immortal makes the Now,

And is not ta’en in Time’s arrears;

His life ’s a hymn

The seraphim

Might hark to hear or help to sing,

And to his soul

The boundless whole

Its bounty all doth daily bring.

“All time is mine,” the sky-soul saith;

“The wealth I am, must thou become;

Richer and richer, breath by breath,—

Immortal gain, immortal room!”

And since all his

Mine also is,

Life’s gift outruns my fancies far,

And drowns the dream

In larger stream,

As morning drinks the morning-star.