dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Mary Aldis

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The World Cry

Mary Aldis

JOY, light, and love I crave

And shall discover—

Life’s wild adventure opening to my will:

High thought and brave,

The rapture of a lover,

The Vision gleaming from yon western hill.

Beyond my present sight

There lies some sweet allure,

Some crested glory waiting to be won;

Shimmering in light,

Beautiful and sure,

Beckoning bright hands that call me on.

I know not where it lies,

Nor whither I go, nor how

The way is paved—with pleasure or with pain;

But the search is in my eyes,

And the dust upon my brow

Shall turn to aureoled gold when I attain.

………

Oh, old old hope—

Unfulfilled desire!

Pitiful the faith,

Beautiful the fire!

Know, soul who criest,

Thy gleaming from afar,

Thy quest of wild adventure,

Thy sweet far star

Shall be the bitter path

To a high stern goal;

So bow thy head

To thine own soul.