Midnight and I ponder on the world and life and people, ponder on infinity and God, ponder on the reasons and designs of created things. I ponder on the world within me, that world of emotion which chokes and smothers, delights and intoxicates, and which concocts on the slightest pretense monstrous fears, and embellishes a maidens smile with ineffable beauty.I ponder on the hopes and dreads which seem to imbue my thoughts side by side and day by day. I ponder on the doubts that weight me down, and on the beliefs that prop me up.
I explore my heart for a grain of truth. There has got to be a reasonable plan of living. There has got to be some order out of all this chaos. My thoughts are jumbled. a veil has been placed between me and truth. My life is slipping away, and so little do I really know about life.
I have not lived a day that has not been replete with uncertainty and discontent. How I search for something true and lasting that will satisfy this longing in my soul.
In the night I look out the window and see the stars, and they seem so far away. I shudder not from the cold, but from loneliness. All my years have not yielded me the peace I sought. All my searching has not yielded me understanding.
We spend our lives searching for truth. We search for it in our work and in other people, we search for it in the earth and in the sky, we search for it with our hands, our hearts, and with our minds, we search with our senses, our pleasures, and our woes.
We search for truth in the night when we are alone with our thoughts. We search for truth when we are in a crowd of people, look for it in their eyes, and on their faces, listen for it in their words, and in their voices.
Truth is the tantalus that draws the scientist to continue his exhausting experiments, and that prompts the writer to search his soul for expression. It is the belief that maybe truth is over the next hill that keeps us going.
In fall where flees the green unseen?
Where flies the robin "til spring?
In the sun where goes the dew unto?
Where goes the stars in day?
Where goes our soul to stay?
The Old Gate
The house where I was
born
Has long since
gone,
And I feel quite
forlorn
As my parents have
passed on.
Though sagging with
weight of years
The old yard
gate yet stands in place.
It
almost brings forth tears
So
many memories round it grace.
My
feet have trod past it
there
Since I was a lad
small
Sometimes heavy with
care,
Sometimes caring not at
all.
Through summers sweltering
hot,
Winters long and
cold
Ever swinging about
It
has opened times
untold.
I returned to the place where I had been born after many years. The old farmhouse had been torn down, and my parents had passed away. But the sunlight and the trees seemed the same. The little stream flowing over the rocks seemed the same. The birds sang just as sweetly, and even seemed the same birds I heard as a child. The birds that cheered me then, they seemed to cheer me now.The wind had not changed as it still made that same wailing sound, and still rustled the leaves and cooled my brow. Those were the same hills I used to play upon and climb and pretend as I watched the clouds, and viewed the valley below. Yet it was not the same, and would never ever be the same again.
