Two Octaves by Edwin Arlington Robinson
I
Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms All outward recognition of revealed And righteous omnipresence are the days Of most of us affrighted and diseased, But rather by the common snarls of life That come to test us and to strengthen us In this the prentice-age of discontent, Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame.
II
When through hot fog the fulgid sun looks down Upon a stagnant earth where listless men Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat, Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, -- It seems to me somehow that God himself Scans with a close reproach what I have done, Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears, And fathoms my unprofitable thoughts.
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