Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

The next poem on our walk-through is especially meaningful to me. It’s titled “If You But Knew, and it’s by an unknown author. I resonate strongly with the message in this poem, a love poem both solemn and hopeful, made beautiful through simplicity. Everything you need to know about the poem can be gleaned from the very first two lines:

“If you but knew
How all my days seem filled with dreams of you

There’s often a power in simplicity, which this poem exemplifies. I love its feel of longing and uncertainty and I know you’ll enjoy it too.

If you but knew
How all my days seem filled with dreams of you
How sometimes in the silent night
Your eyes thrill through me with their tender light
How oft I hear your voice when others speak,
How you ‘mid other forms I seek –
Oh, love more real than though such dreams were true
If you but knew.

Could you but guess
How you alone make all my hapiness,
How I am more than willing for your sake
To stand alone, give all and nothing take,
Nor chafe to think bound while I am free,
Quite free, till death, to love you silently,
Could you but guess.

Could you but learn
How when you doubt my truth I sadly yearn
To tell you all, to stand for one brief space
Unfettered, soul to soul, as face to face,
To crown you king, my king, till life shall end,
My love and likewise my truest friend.
Would you love me, dearest, as fondly in return,
Could you but learn?

As I said before, I think that the beauty of this poem comes from it’s simplicity. Many poems try to build up, delivering their most powerful lines at the end for that final punch to leave the reader amazed. But this poem does the opposite. It delivers its most powerful lines right in the beginning and continues on from there, leaving a smile on our faces and a sigh in our hearts. The reason I wanted to couple this poem with the last poem, Maud Muller, by John Greenleaf Whittier, is because the feeling of the two poems were very similar for me.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

“If you but knew
How all my days seem filled with dreams of you”

These two lines elicited the same feeling of longing to find the best that love has to offer knowing that the question “what might have been?” has the potential to haunt us all our days. These two poems made me realize something about love. Truly loving is the most courageous act in all of life. But how many of us truly love? In my own life, this poem resonates strongly with me. Never have I loved courageously, without borders, revealing undaunted what has been hidden in the shadows. I can attest that this is true, as one who has loved from the shadows. One day, Lord willing, I will be a courageous man.