O Tent of Hope, What Glorious Days You’ve Known!

and some were pleased with his reign, while others lived in grief and sorrow

Peer in on any era

And you will find fine mixtures

In the grain of sad and good.

You can’t say awful wasn’t

Awful, and you shouldn’t turn

To try to avoid the sight—

It won’t work, and it’s not right.

This is the harder sermon

To deliver—the mixture

Is intricate as language,

As immunity, as genes,

As never simply blended.

There are two things, not a blend.

If there were both, there’d be one.

Earth, despite what myths call it,

Is not a middle, never

The mean of heavens and hells.

Earth is iron in the night,

Writhing, intricately wrought

By its own magnetic fields,

And, instead of outer rings,

Rings its surface with species,

Lives alternately pleasing,

Or lined with grief and sorrow.