Happiness Makes Up In Height What It Lacks In Length

Somewhere in the Czech.

I remember a wonderful poem we studied and had to learn at school by Robert Frost an American writer from the deep South of America - Alabama. As a fifteen year old girl, it was too great for me to contemplate, but now I truly understand it.

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length

O stormy, stormy world,

The days you were not swirled

Around with mist and cloud,

Or wrapped as in a shroud,

And the sun's brilliant ball 

Was not in part or all

Obscured from mortal view--

Were days so very few

I can but wonder whence

I get the lasting sense

Of so much warmth and light.

If my mistrust is right

It may be altogether

From one day's perfect weather,

When starting clear at dawn

The day swept clearly dawn

To finish clear at eve.

I verily believe

My fair impression may

Be all from that one day

No shadow crossed but ours

As through its blazing flowers

We went from house to wood

For change of solitude.

Frost is talking about how mixed experience is and how we remember moments of happiness, in spite of the vast majority of moments spent in confusion, groping for meaning or transcendence. The truly clear, splendid moments are few, and when they occur, they are almost too brilliant for us-- we cast about for a change of solitude. It is too perfect for us at those moments. But the memory of them resonates in our memory. The moments of happiness 'make up in height' what they lack in length.

We are dissatisfied, struggling a lot, and we find peace and beauty, occasionally, in the tumult of worry and care.