The Experience Of All Men Poem by Bessie Rayner Parkes

MINE eyes are grown too dim with tears to gaze
Into the future with that eager eye
Which, in the fulness of my young amaze
At this fair earth and various harmony,
I bent on all things, hoping to descry
A parallel in spirit; but I found
Such grief and desolation all around,
And the air fill'd with such a mournful cry
Of human tones, that I shook off my dream,
And comfortless arose. And then God spake--
Have I not given thee work wherein shall be
A life's joy and abiding-place for thee?
Time to thine eyes a fairy vision brake,
Time does but perfect every noble aim.