Random poem, revisited

One of my favorite poetry sites is the plagiarist.com, where users type in their favorite poems, and after verification, they get posted and can be commented on, discussed, etc. They also have a feature for generating a random poem, and today's random poem was one that I not only knew, but has a line I absolutely love. Here's the poem reproduced, and with my favorite line in italics:

Autumn Daybreak
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know—for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor—
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.


The whole poem has a lot to say -- that impending cold and bleakness can reveal as much as light and warmth -- but the line I italicized strikes a chord with me as a reminder that --evolution, change, the light at the end of the tunnel -- the things we strive for -- so often show up as a "meagre light increased" than as "a disk in splendour shown."

Sometimes what reveals progress most is simply the guts, not the glory.