Fourteen sonnets and poems/Hope

by Henry Wilmarth Hazzen

Hope

WITHOUT haste, without rest,
Teach the prophets of to-day;
Bind this motto to thy breast,
⁠Grant not Nirvana, Lord, I pray.

No days are overfilled with woe,
⁠No nights but lights are on the way,
And when my soul to Thee must go,
⁠Withhold Nirvana, Lord, I pray.

To me divine the life that is
⁠More good than evil, gay than grave;
I could not think it to resign,
⁠And for Nirvana then to crave.

I only ask myself to keep
⁠In conscious life in that great day;
Engulf it not in essence deep,
⁠Or blank Nirvana, Lord, I pray.