| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 17 |
Page 9 |
One was speaking of a friendship that was wondrously sweet, but lamented that is was given only for a short while. A year after marriage the love was gone. “I could almost have wished I had not had the friendship at all – it was so soon ended,” grieved the lonely one. Say it not. It is blessed to love and be loved, though it be only for a day. One of Richard Watson Gilder’s sweetest poems runs:
“Because the rose must fade,
Shall I not love the rose?
Because the summer shade
Passes when winter blows,
Shall I not rest me there
In the cool air?
“Because the sunset sky
Makes music in my soul
Only to fail and die,
Shall I not take the whole
Of beauty that it gives
While yet it lives?”
It is sweet to have had your friend if only for a few days, for then you will have the memory for ever, and this remember will cast it’s soft radiance down over all the years to come.
A good woman wrote that she had found the secret of getting joy out of every sorrow. When the grief comes and begins to seem more than she can bear, she goes out and finds some other one in suffering or need, and begins to minister, to comfort. Then her own grief or trouble is gone. Try it. It will prove true for you, too. Put your pain or sorrow into some service of love and it will be changed into a song.
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