Read "To Youth -- in Secret Joy" by Fannie Stearns Davis online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Shut out the wind, shut out the gloom, Draw the gold curtains round the room: The candle-light sees well that you Are glad, as mortals may be. Through Your heart a secret fragrance blows, Like a June garden, when a rose Leans to the wind: the light-lipped morn Whispers, "So thou! so thou -- art born!"
Oh, far away the haunted past With all its lonely spaces, vast And hollow as an echoing hall Of hateful dreams, where you might call And run, but never find the end, Nor window-slit, nor face of friend. And far away the future. Far Its shadow as its saving star. (In truth, what stars shall shine? to make The sky still holy for their sake, When earth seems faded, and you know: "Soon I must go. Soon I must go. ")