How Strange our Lives!

How strange our lives! A wayward breathUpon the current of the mindMay change its course—an idle wind,Filled full with fate, or life, or death.

It comes upon us unaware,It steals into our very soul,Transmutes our being, and the whole'What might have been' dissolves in air—

And 'That which must be' takes its placeAt some strange crisis of our life;A winning or a losing strife—Victor or vanquished in the race.

'Tis pitiful how slight a thing,Unsought, unnoticed at the time,May plunge us in a slough of crime,Or set a bare tree blossoming.So mean the cause, the effect so great:—Some single word, some simple deed,Which at the time we scarcely heed,Opens the door, or shuts the gate

On our high hopes. We wander far,Down loveless vistas, or with Love,Dreaming we lie within the grove.How few, alas! who gain that star

Which shines on each one from his birth,Lit with strange meanings, mystical,Pointed with lurid fires which shallMislead or guide us upon earth;

Until we win that far-off heaven,Across the cold, blue, glacier-steep.How few, alas! their foothold keep,And to how few Faith's wings are given.