Compensations

Time, the phantom, slow or fleet
Passes to its own defeat
     In a grand eternity;
Every transitory year
Makes the endless day more near
     That sets captive spirits free.

Life, as given by mortal birth
Never ripens on this earth,
     Be its term prolonged or brief.
In what heavens below it wins
The true life above begins,
     Parting knowledge from belief.

Cares & vexing trials here
Mould us for that better sphere
     We were born to reach at length;
Won by patience in defeat
Victory is no less sweet
     Than if snatched by vital strength.

Hardy trees are not [?] at cost [?]
Of [?] gales & biting frost
     That make firm what {??} gives
Winter, the unkindly kind,
Roughen the protecting rind
     For what sap within it lives

When autumnal days appear
In the transit of the year,
     And the husks [?] are drooping sad,
Sturdy Oak lifts up its head —
All its breathing foliage shed. —
     Grander than when greenly clad.

Then ye see its knotted hews [?] —
Gnarlèd knees that builders use —
     For the riders of the wave, —
Thus when fortune scatters wide
Friends & treasure from our side
     Stand revealed the wholly brave [?]

Days of mingled sun & rain,
Scenes of shifting joy & pain,
     Mould a being heaven adorns;
Souls who never know distress
Share a feebler happiness;
     Rays succeed the crown of thorns.

Stars, our glory’s heaven lights,
Gem the darkness on her heights
     Loading up the steep ascent;
In the blaze of fortune’s day
They can lend no guiding ray,
     And we bask in dull content.

We leave be [?] the cloud & shine
That make human life divine
     Trough the opening of a soul
Born on earth to bloom above
In th’ effulgence of that love
     That gives sunny cheer & dole [?]