I <br /> <br />We cannot choose our sorrows. One there was <br />Who, reverent of soul, and strong with trust, <br />Cried, 'God, though Thou shouldst bow me to the dust, <br />Yet will I praise thy everlasting laws. <br />Beggared, my faith would never halt or pause, <br />But sing Thy glory, feasting on a crust. <br />Only one boon, one precious boon I must <br />Demand of Thee, O opulent great Cause. <br />Let Love stay with me, constant to the end, <br />Though fame pass by and poverty pursue.' <br />With freighted hold her life ship onward sailed; <br />The world gave wealth, and pleasure, and a friend, <br />Unmarred by envy, and whose heart was true. <br />But ere the sun reached midday, Love had failed. <br /> <br /> <br />II <br /> <br />Then from the depths, in bitterness she cried, <br />'Hell is on earth, and heaven is but a dream; <br />And human life a troubled aimless stream; <br />And God is nowhere. Would God so deride <br />A loving creature's faith?' A voice replied, <br />'The stream flows onward to the Source Supreme, <br />Where things that ARE replace the things that SEEM, <br />And where the deeds of all past lives abide. <br />Once at thy door Love languished and was spurned. <br />Who sorrow plants, must garner sorrow's sheaf. <br />No prayers can change the seedling in the sod. <br />By thine own heart Love's anguish must be learned. <br />Pass on, and know, as one made wise by grief, <br />That in thyself dwells heaven and hell and God.'<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/karma-52/
