The Truth Teller

The Truth Teller lifts the curtain,          And shows us the people's plight;     And everything seems uncertain,          And nothing at all looks right.     Yet out of the blackness groping,          My heart finds a world in bloom;     For it somehow is fashioned for hoping,          And it cannot live in the gloom.     He tells us from border to border,          That race is warring with race;     With riot and mad disorder,          The earth is a wretched place;     And yet ere the sun is setting          I am thinking of peace, not strife;     For my heart has a way of forgetting          All things save the joy of life.     I heard in my Youth's beginning          That earth was a region of woe,     And trouble, and sorrow, and sinning:          The Truth Teller told me so.     I knew it was true, and tragic;          And I mourned over much that was wrong;     And then, by some curious magic,          The heart of me burst into song.     The years have been going, going,          A mixture of pleasure and pain;     But the Truth Teller's books are showing          That evil is on the gain.     And I know that I ought to be grieving,          And I should be too sad to sing;     But somehow I keep on believing          That life is a glorious thing.