Speak Kindly.
SPEAK kindly in the morning,
When you are leaving home,
And give the day a lighter heart
Into the week to roam.
Leave kind words as mementoes
To be handled and caressed,
And watch the noon-time hour arrive
In gold and tinsel dressed.
Speak kindly in the evening!
When on the walk is heard
A tired footstep that you know,
Speak one refreshing word,
And see the glad light springing
From the heart into the eye,
As sometimes from behind a cloud
A star leaps to the sky.
Speak kindly to the children
That crowd around your chair,
The tender lips that lean on yours
Kiss, smooth the flaxen hair;
Some day a room that’s lonesome
The little ones may own,
And home be empty as the nest
From which the birds have flown.
Speak kindly to the stranger
Who passes through the town,
A loving word is light of weight—
Not so would prove a frown.
One is a precious jewel
The heart would grasp in sleep,
The other like a demon’s gift
The memory loathes to keep.
Speak kindly to the sorrowful
Who stand beside the dead,
The heart can lean against a word
Though thorny seems the bed.
And oh, to those discouraged
Who faint upon the way,
Stop, stop—if just a moment—
And something kindly say.
Speak kindly to the fallen ones,
Your voice may help them rise;
A word right-spoken oft unclasps
The gate beyond the skies.
Speak kindly, and the future
You’ll find God looking through!
Speak of another as you’d have
Him always speak of you.
Those Willing Hands
IN MEMORY OF MISS FANNIE STEVENS.
THOSE willing hands—they’re still to-night—
The life has from them fled;
They’re folded from the longing sight,
So cold and pale and dead.
The busy veins have idle grown,
Like a long famished rill,
That once in such an eager tone
Called soft from hill to hill.
Dear hands, I’ve felt their pressure oft,
In a sad time gone by;
They moved about the years as soft
As clouds move through the sky.
They screened the rainstorm from my heart,
And let the moonlight in,
And showed, while shadows fell athwart,
Tracks where the sun had been.
They were such willing, willing hands,
They stilled the mournful tear,
Unwound the pattern of God’s plans,
And made his problems clear.
They did not reach to high-grown bowers,
Where rarest blossoms bloom;
But culled the blessed, purer flowers,
And bore them to the tomb.
Poor hands—they are so still and white,
The rose that shared their rest
Is shrinking from the long, dark night,
And falling on her breast.
The wreath is wilted on the mound
Where long the sunshine stands,
But angels have the sleeper found,
And clasped those willing hands.
