<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=115590" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Views of Life</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">When sinks my heart in hopeless gloom,<br>And life can shew no joy for me;<br>And I behold a yawning tomb,<br>Where bowers and palaces should be;<br>In vain you talk of morbid dreams;<br>In vain you gaily smiling say,<br>That what to me so dreary seems,<br>The healthy mind deems bright and gay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I too have smiled, and thought like you,<br>But madly smiled, and falsely deemed:<br>Truth led me to the present view,<br>I'm waking now -- 'twas then I dreamed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I lately saw a sunset sky,<br>And stood enraptured to behold<br>Its varied hues of glorious dye:<br>First, fleecy clouds of shining gold;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These blushing took a rosy hue;<br>Beneath them shone a flood of green;<br>Nor less divine, the glorious blue<br>That smiled above them and between.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I cannot name each lovely shade;<br>I cannot say how bright they shone;<br>But one by one, I saw them fade;<br>And what remained whey they were gone?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Dull clouds remained, of sombre hue,<br>And when their borrowed charm was o'er,<br>The azure sky had faded too,<br>That smiled so softly bright before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, gilded by the glow of youth,<br>Our varied life looks fair and gay;<br>And so remains the naked truth,<br>When that false light is past away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why blame ye, then, my keener sight,<br>That clearly sees a world of woes,<br>Through all the haze of golden light,<br>That flattering Falsehood round it throws?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When the young mother smiles above<br>The first-born darling of her heart,<br>Her bosom glows with earnest love,<br>While tears of silent transport start.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Fond dreamer! little does she know<br>The anxious toil, the suffering,<br>The blasted hopes, the burning woe,<br>The object of her joy will bring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her blinded eyes behold not now<br>What, soon or late, must be his doom;<br>The anguish that will cloud his brow,<br>The bed of death, the dreary tomb.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As little know the youthful pair,<br>In mutual love supremely blest,<br>What weariness, and cold despair,<br>Ere long, will seize the aching breast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, even, should Love and Faith remain,<br>(The greatest blessings life can show,)<br>Amid adversity and pain,<br>To shine, throughout with cheering glow;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They do not see how cruel Death<br>Comes on, their loving hearts to part:<br>One feels not now the gasping breath,<br>The rending of the earth-bound heart, --</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The soul's and body's agony,<br>Ere she may sink to her repose,<br>The sad survivor cannot see<br>The grave above his darling close;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor how, despairing and alone,<br>He then must wear his life away;<br>And linger, feebly toiling on,<br>And fainting, sink into decay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Oh, Youth may listen patiently,<br>While sad Experience tells her tale;<br>But Doubt sits smiling in his eye,<br>For ardent Hope will still prevail!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He hears how feeble Pleasure dies,<br>By guilt destroyed, and pain and woe;<br>He turns to Hope -­ and she replies,<br>'Believe it not -­ it is not so!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oh, heed her not!' Experience says,<br>'For thus she whispered once to me;<br>She told me, in my youthful days,<br>How glorious manhood's prime would be.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When, in the time of early Spring,<br>Too chill the winds that o'er me pass'd,<br>She said, each coming day would bring<br>A fairer heaven, a gentler blast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when the sun too seldom beamed,<br>The sky, o'ercast, too darkly frowned,<br>The soaking rain too constant streamed,<br>And mists too dreary gathered round;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'She told me Summer's glorious ray<br>Would chase those vapours all away,<br>And scatter glories round,<br>With sweetest music fill the trees,<br>Load with rich scent the gentle breeze,<br>And strew with flowers the ground.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when, beneath that scorching ray,<br>I languished, weary, through the day,<br>While birds refused to sing,<br>Verdure decayed from field and tree,<br>And panting Nature mourned with me<br>The freshness of the Spring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">"Wait but a little while," she said,<br>"Till Summer's burning days are fled;<br>And Autumn shall restore,<br>With golden riches of her own,<br>And Summer's glories mellowed down,<br>The freshness you deplore."</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And long I waited, but in vain:<br>That freshness never came again,<br>Though Summer passed away,<br>Though Autumn's mists hung cold and chill,<br>And drooping nature languished still,<br>And sank into decay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Till wintry blasts foreboding blew<br>Through leafless trees -­ and then I knew<br>That Hope was all a dream.<br>But thus, fond youth, she cheated me;<br>And she will prove as false to thee,<br>Though sweet her words may seem.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Stern prophet! Cease thy bodings dire -­<br>Thou canst not quench the ardent fire<br>That warms the breast of youth.<br>Oh, let it cheer him while it may,<br>And gently, gently die away --<br>Chilled by the damps of truth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tell him, that earth is not our rest;<br>Its joys are empty -- frail at best;<br>And point beyond the sky.<br>But gleams of light may reach us here;<br>And hope the roughest path can cheer:<br>Then do not bid it fly!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though hope may promise joys, that still<br>Unkindly time will ne'er fulfil;<br>Or, if they come at all,<br>We never find them unalloyed, -­<br>Hurtful perchance, or soon destroyed,<br>They vanish or they pall;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet hope itself a brightness throws<br>O'er all our labours and our woes;<br>While dark foreboding Care<br>A thousand ills will oft portend,<br>That Providence may ne'er intend<br>The trembling heart to bear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Or if they come, it oft appears,<br>Our woes are lighter than our fears,<br>And far more bravely borne.<br>Then let us not enhance our doom;<br>But e'en in midnight's blackest gloom<br>Expect the rising morn.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Because the road is rough and long,<br>Shall we despise the skylark's song,<br>That cheers the wanderer's way?<br>Or trample down, with reckless feet,<br>The smiling flowerets, bright and sweet<br>Because they soon decay?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pass pleasant scenes unnoticed by,<br>Because the next is bleak and drear;<br>Or not enjoy a smiling sky,<br>Because a tempest may be near?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No! while we journey on our way,<br>We'll notice every lovely thing;<br>And ever, as they pass away,<br>To memory and hope we'll cling.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And though that awful river flows<br>Before us, when the journey's past,<br>Perchance of all the pilgrim's woes<br>Most dreadful -- shrink not -­ 'tis the last!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Though icy cold, and dark, and deep;<br>Beyond it smiles that blessed shore,<br>Where none shall suffer, none shall weep,<br>And bliss shall reign for evermore!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Anne+Bront%C3%AB">Anne Brontë</a> from <i>Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell</i><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=115590" data-title="Views of Life de Anne Brontë" data-description="When sinks my heart in hopeless gloom,/And life can shew no joy for me;/And I behold a yawning tomb,/Where bowers and palaces should be;/In vain you talk of morbid dreams;/In vain you gaily smiling say,/That what to me so dreary seems,/The healthy..."></div> </div> </div>

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