That which we are and shall be is made up <br />Of what we have been. On the autumn leaf <br />The crimson stains bear witness of its spring; <br />And, on its perfect nodes, the ocean shell <br />Notches the slow, strange changes of its growth. <br />Ourselves are our own records; if we looked <br />Rightly into that blotted crimson page <br />Within our bosoms, then there were no need <br />To chronicle our stories; for the heart <br />Hath, like the earth, its strata, and contains <br />Its past within its present. Well for us, <br />And our most cherished secrets, that within <br />The round of being few there are who read <br />Beneath the surface. Else our very forms, <br />The merest gesture of our hands, might tell <br />Much we would hide forever. Know you not <br />Those eyes, in whose dark heaven I have gazed <br />More curiously than on my favorite stars, <br />Are deeper for such griefs as they have seen, <br />And brighter for the fancies they have shrined, <br />And sweeter for the loves which they have talked? <br />Oh! that I had the power to read their smiles, <br />Or sound the depth of all their glorious gloom. <br />So should I learn your history from its birth, <br />Through all its glad and grave experiences, <br />Better than if -- (your journal in my hand, <br />Written as only women write, with all <br />A woman's shades and shapes of feeling, traced <br />As with the fine touch of a needle's point) -- <br />I followed you from that bright hour when first <br />I saw you in the garden 'mid the flowers, <br />To that wherein a letter from your hand <br />Made me all rich with the dear name of friend.<br /><br />Henry Timrod<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-to-r-l/
