IN DARKNESS, a poem

          I WILL be still;
The terror drawing nigh
Shall startle from my lips no coward cry;
Nay, though the night my deadliest dread fulfil,
          I will be still.

          For, oh! I know,
Though suffering hours delay,
Yet to Eternity they pass away,
Carrying something onward as they flow,
          Outlasting woe!

          Yes, something won;
The harvest of our tears—
Something unfading, plucked from fading years,
Something to blossom on beyond the sun.
          From sorrow won.

          The agony,
So hopeless now of balm,
Shall sleep at last, in light as pure and calm
As that wherewith the stars look down on thee,
          Gethsemane!

"In Darkness" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Harper's New Monthly Magazine (November 1888), Poems (1898) and Poems (1916) Volume I.