The Lift of the Heart

WHEN we stand with the woods around us
And the great boughs overhead;
When the wind blows cool on our foreheads,
And the breath of the pines is shed;
When the song of the thrush is ringing —
Wonderful, rich, apart —
Between the sound and the silence
Comes a sudden lift of the heart.

When we gaze from a wintry summit
Over mountain-tops aglow
In the clear cold light of the sunset,
And on pools of dusk below;
When the frozen woods are so silent
That a dead leaf makes us start, —
Between the flush and the fading
Comes a sudden lift of the heart.

When we seek with the clearer vision
That Grief the Revealer brings
For the threads that are shot together
In the close-wrought Web of Things;
And find that Pain is woven
Into Love and Joy and Art,—
Between the search and the solace
Comes a sudden lift of the heart.

And when life’s farthing candle
Gutters and flares and sinks;
When the eye no longer wanders,
And the brain no longer thinks;
When only the hand plucks idly
At the sheet till the spirit part, —
Does there come between living and dying
A sudden lift of the heart?