Reverie ["We laugh when our souls are the saddest,"]

A poem by Abram Joseph Ryan

We laugh when our souls are the saddest,
We shroud all our griefs in a smile;
Our voices may warble their gladdest,
And our souls mourn in anguish the while.

And our eyes wear a summer's bright glory,
When winter is wailing beneath;
And we tell not the world the sad story
Of the thorn hidden back of the wreath.

Ah! fast flow the moments of laughter,
And bright as the brook to the sea
But ah! the dark hours that come after
Of moaning for you and for me.

Yea, swift as the sunshine, and fleeting
As birds, fly the moments of glee!
And we smile, and mayhap grief is sleeting
Its ice upon you and on me.

And the clouds of the tempest are shifting
O'er the heart, tho' the face may be bright;
And the snows of woe's winter are drifting
Our souls; and each day hides a night.

For ah! when our souls are enjoying
The mirth which our faces reveal,
There is something -- a something -- alloying
The sweetness of joy that we feel.

Life's loveliest sky hides the thunder
Whose bolt in a moment may fall;
And our path may be flowery, but under
The flowers there are thorns for us all.

Ah! 'tis hard when our beautiful dreamings
That flash down the valley of night,
Wave their wing when the gloom hides their gleaming,
And leave us, like eagles in flight;

And fly far away unreturning,
And leave us in terror and tears,
While vain is the spirit's wild yearning
That they may come back in the years.

Come back! did I say it? but never
Do eagles come back to the cage:
They have gone -- they have gone -- and forever --
Does youth come back ever to age?

No! a joy that has left us in sorrow
Smiles never again on our way,
But we meet in the farthest to-morrow
The face of the grief of to-day.

The brightness whose tremulous glimmer
Has faded we cannot recall;
And the light that grows dimmer and dimmer --
When gone -- 'tis forever and all.

Not a ray of it anywhere lingers,
Not a gleam of it gilds the vast gloom;
Youth's roses perfume not the fingers
Of age groping nigh to the tomb.

For "the memory of joy is a sadness" --
The dim twilight after the day;
And the grave where we bury a gladness
Sends a grief like a ghost, on our way.

No day shall return that has faded,
The dead come not back from the tomb;
The vale of each life must be shaded,
That we may see best from the gloom.

The height of the homes of our glory,
All radiant with splendors of light;
That we may read clearly life's story --
"The dark is the dawn of the bright."