Listening patiently
For some voice speaking from the mighty deep,
Revealing all the things that it doth keep
In secret there for me.
Come back and wait, my soul!
Day after day thy search has been in vain.
Voiceless and silent o'er the future's plain
Its mystic waters roll.
God, seeing, knoweth best,
And in His time the waters shall subside,
And thou shalt know what lies beneath the tide.
Then wait, my soul, and rest.
[OUR BLESSINGS.]
Sitting to-day in the sunshine,
That touched me with fingers of love,
I thought of the manifold blessings
God scatters on earth, from above;
And they seemed, as I numbered them over
Far more than we merit or need
And all that we lack is the angels
To make earth a heaven indeed.
The winter brings long, pleasant evenings,
The spring brings a promise of flowers
That summer breathes into fruition,
And autumn brings glad, golden hours.
The woodlands re-echo with music,
The moonbeams ensilver the sea;
There is sunlight and beauty about us,
And the world is as fair as can be.
But mortals are always complaining.
Each one thinks his own a sad lot;
And forgetting the good things about him,
Goes mourning for those he has not.
Instead of the star-spangled heavens,
We look on the dust at our feet;
We drain out the cup that is bitter,
Forgetting the one that is sweet.
We mourn o'er the thorn in the flower,
Forgetting its odor and bloom;
We pass by a garden of blossoms,
To weep o'er the dust of the tomb.
There are blessings unnumbered about us,--
Like the leaves of the forest they grow;
And the fault is our own--not the Giver's--
That we have not an Eden below.
[GOING AWAY.]
Walking to-day on the Common,
I heard a stranger say
To a friend who was standing near him,
"Do you know I am going away?"
I had never seen their faces:
May never see them again,
But the words the stranger uttered,
Stirred me with nameless pain.