In Every Passing Smile

Today will be the same as yesterday,

No monumental change perceptible.

I shall work for work is all I've known

Then look at my new rose and contemplate -

Could anything be more perfect than the rose?

I saw an Arab child of fifteen months

Who smiled at me and in his jet black eyes

Held beauty and the wisdom of the rose

And everywhere I went I looked in eyes

And found in them a meaning like the rose,

So many lives, so many souls on earth

Choosing to undergo the trials of birth

And the progressive evolution of the soul.

Heaven must be jealous that they prefer

Struggle and death and the cycles of rebirth

To angels aloft in a paradise of song.

Today is not the same as yesterday.

I have seen human kindness and have grown

By contact with things simple and divine.

Tomorrow I will wake to feel the change

And hear a music from the lips of men,

See wisdom shining from the children's eyes

And in the eternal feminine shall find

Beauty and love in every passing smile.