Nothing Is Lost

By James Owen Tryon

Nothing is lost, so long as dreams re-build
The shattered walls and bastions of our lives.
Nothing is lost, so long as hope revives,
With its recurrent springs, what frost has stilled.
This plot of earth which I call mine is filled.
With powers prophetic, with a strength which strives
In quiet ways to break its icy gyves,
And disprove winter’s boast that it has killed.

So lest I grant that this poor strip of ground
Which greens and quickens to a voice unheard
Has more of immortality than I,
I shall not take misfortune at its word
Or let my soul to poverty be bound.
Have we not both the roof-tree of the sky?

(1935)