RECONCILIATION
As if some friend of deeply truthful soul
Had come to us—all angry, wretched, ill—
And had begun to speak, our circle now,
Revived and filled with joy, grew hushed and still.
Groundless complaints and clamorous phrases loud,
And vanity, with its envenomed darts—
Whatever of harm life, like a viewless plague,
Sows ’mid us all, e’en in the noblest hearts—
All these grew calm, and only one desire,
One impulse in us all blazed into fire—
To suffer and to strive with all our souls
To scatter the surrounding darkness dire.
O friend! your notes revealed to us that night
All that was false in us, unseen till then;
And we clasped hands more firmly when at dawn
We to our daily work returned again.
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