You Shall Not Pass This Way Again

As I was doing my hair this afternoon and thinking about 100 things I want to get done today, all of a sudden an old poem popped into my head. My freshman year in high school I tried doing Poetry on the speech team (and failed miserably…extemp was where I found my calling) with a piece entitled “Carpe Diem” (yeah…pretty cliche). I think the combination of taking Latin class and watching “Dead Poet’s Society” inspired me. Of course, I couldn’t REALLY appreciate at 14 years old the idea of “seizing the day.”

The poem from that piece that popped into my head today is entitled “I Shall Not Pass This Way Again” and was written around 1900 by Eva Rose York. I’m sure at the time I understood it simply to mean to make the most of life. However, today I thought about it much more deeply. It’s about appreciating both the big and the little things. Helping everyone we can along the way. Understanding that seasons change.

Here is one of my favorite parts:

“And let no chance by me be lost

To kindness show at any cost.

I shall not pass this way again.

Then let me now relieve some pain,

Remove some barrier from the road,

Or brighten someone’s heavy load;

A helping hand to this one lend,

Then turn some other to befriend.”

This weekend will be filled with volunteer work at the school for my girls’ choirs. It will be exhausting. It will be stressful. Last year I ended up in tears halfway through the day. So why did thinking about all that is to come in the next 36 hours make me think about this poem?

In the end, I know that I will look back on these times with my kids and cherish them. I’ll miss not spending all day Saturday at the school. I’ll wish I was driving them all over the place while listening to them talk about their day. These are moments that I will never again have in my life and a path that I will not walk again once they have graduated.

Here’s the whole poem, if you are interested. It’s a little different than I remembered it, but the feeling I get in reading it is the same.

I Shall Not Pass This Way Again (1900) Eva Rose York

I shall not pass this way again—

Although it bordered be with flowers,

Although I rest in fragrant bowers,

And hear the singing

Of song-birds winging

To highest heaven their gladsome flight;

Though moons are full and stars are bright,

And winds and waves are softly sighing,

While leafy trees make low replying;

Though voices clear in joyous strain

Repeat a jubilant refrain;

Though rising suns their radiance throw

On summer’s green and winter’s snow,

In such rare splendor that my heart

Would ache from scenes like these to part;

Though beauties heighten,

And life-lights brighten,

And joys proceed from every pain,—

I shall not pass this way again.

Then let me pluck the flowers that blow,

And let me listen as I go

To music rare

That fills the air;

And let hereafter

Songs and laughter

Fill every pause along the way;

And to my spirit let me say:

“O soul, be happy; soon ’tis trod,

The path made thus for thee by God.

Be happy, thou, and bless His name

By whom such marvellous beauty came.”

And let no chance by me be lost

To kindness show at any cost.

I shall not pass this way again.

Then let me now relieve some pain,

Remove some barrier from the road,

Or brighten someone’s heavy load;

A helping hand to this one lend,

Then turn some other to befriend.

O God, forgive

That I now live

As if I might, sometime, return

To bless the weary ones that yearn

For help and comfort every day,—

For there be such along the way.

O God, forgive that I have seen

The beauty only, have not been

Awake to sorrow such as this;

That I have drunk the cup of bliss

Remembering not that those there be

Who drink the dregs of misery.

I love the beauty of the scene,

Would roam again o’er fields so green;

But since I may not, let me spend

My strength for others to the end,—

For those who tread on rock and stone,

And bear their burdens all alone,

Who loiter not in leafy bowers,

Nor hear the birds nor pluck the flowers.

A larger kindness give to me,

A deeper love and sympathy;

Then, O, one day

May someone say—

Remembering a lessened pain—

“Would she could pass this way again.”