Always this way

 

It was always this way for the human heart:

There was always more truth than beauty

And more silent wonder than praise,

And each golden age was only as gold

As the dawns that open our days:

More prayers than faith from the very start;

More endurance than hope on every chart:

It was always this way for the human heart.

 

Always this way: the heart beating here

Between the sun and the shadow we cast,

For no heart ever beat in the future

And no heart ever beat in the past.

Always more close to below than above,

More sorrow than joy, more labor than love,

And our means and the meaning this one world apart:

It was always this way for the human heart.

 

Our courage, our fears, the tears that we cry:

What the heart was made for, the heart was made by.

There was always less consoling than true

And always a sign in our favor, between ourselves

And the going on that we’ve been equal to.

Whatever the stage, the play or the part,

In love and war, in life and art,

It was always this way for the human heart.