To Certain Ones Who Cannot Understand

ALL of her days go similarly by,
Smoothly as water in a meadow stream,
Softly as silken clouds in a still sky,
Silent as a slow star-awakened dream.
But do not pity her who yet has known
No sharp-edged joy, no bitter-pointed pain,
Who has not met grief in the night, alone;
Who with no piercing love has ever lain.

She lives more poignantly than you can guess
Who are too dull to know the ecstasies,
With sun-touched hills, of a long, slow caress
Of moving light on wind-hushed grass and trees;
Who have not felt swept by the wings of birds;
Or pricked by firs along a mountain side;
Or stung by stars like little burning words;
Or stricken like sky at wind’s approaching stride.

She becomes part of earth with every spring
And bears earth’s blossoming as if her own,
Knowing a birth-pain for each lovely thing,
For ice-freed lakes, for orchards apple-blown.
The joy of hills is hers, serene and high;
Hers is each pool of quiet rain-touched grief;
And when her autumn comes, and she must die,
She will go radiantly like a sky-tossed leaf!