EARTH'S MYSTERY, a poem

I LOOKED on Sorrow, tragical and dread;
     Beheld the anguish in her sunken eyes,
     Which yearned no longer upward to the skies,
As dumbly pleading to be comforted,
But bent their blinded vision on the dead:
     The dead removed—how far!—from human sighs,
     Lying majestic, as a conqueror lies,
Indifferent to tears, so costly shed.

But as I pondered, seeking, soul-oppressed,
     To read the riddle of a world like this,
          Where Nature still seems waiting to destroy,
     I saw immortal Love descend and kiss,
With timid wonder, reverent and blest,
          The quivering eyelids and the lips of Joy!

"Earth's Mystery" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in The Delineator as "I Looked on Sorrow" (November 1905), Lyrics of Life (1909) and Poems (1916) Volume II.