Sweet Peril

Alas, how easily things go wrong! 

A sigh too much, or a kiss too long,

And there follows a mist and a weeping rain,

And life is never the same again.

Alas, how hardly things go right!

'Tis hard to watch in a summer night,

For the sigh will come, and the kiss will stay,

And the summer night is a wintry day.

And yet how easily things go right,

If the sigh and the kiss of a summer's night

Come deep from the soul in the stronger ray

That is born in the light of the winter's day.

And things can never go badly wrong

If the heart be true and the love be strong,

For the mist, if it comes, and the weeping rain

Will be changed by the love into sunshine again.

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George MacDonald

Best Loved Poems of the American People, page 60.

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