Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LIFE'S INCONGRUITIES, by EGBERT PHELPS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LIFE'S INCONGRUITIES, by                    
First Line: Green grows the laurel on the bank
Last Line: Too much of joy would wean from heaven.
Subject(s): Life


Green grows the laurel on the bank,
Dark waves the pine upon the hill,
Green hangs the lichen, cold and dank,
Dark springs the heartsease by the rill,
Age-mosses clamber ever bright,
Pale is the water-lily's bloom;
Thus Life still courts the shades of night,
And beauty hovers o'er the tomb.

So, all through life, incongruous hue
Each object wears from childhood down;
The evanescent—heaven's blue,
The all-enduring—sober brown;
Our brightest dreams too quickly die,
And griefs are green that should be old,
And joys that sparkle to the eye
Are like a tale that's quickly told.

And yet't is but the golden mean
That checks our lives' unsteady flow;
God's counterbalance thrown between,
To poise the scale 'twixt joy and woe:
And better so; for were the bowl
Too freely to the parched lip given,
Too much of grief would crush the soul,
Too much of joy would wean from heaven.





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