The thoughts that youth was wont to think,
The hopes now dead for evermore,
Came from the lines of faded ink,
As sweet and earnest as of yore.
I laid the letters by and dreamed
The dear dead past to life again;
The present and its purpose seemed
A fading vision full of pain.
Then, with a sudden shout of glee,
The children burst into the room,
Their little faces were to me
As sunrise in the cloud of gloom.
The world was full of meaning still,
For love will live though loved ones die;
I turned upon life’s darkened hill
And gloried in the morning sky.
VAN ELSEN.
God spake three times and saved Van Elsen’s soul;
He spake by sickness first and made him whole;
Van Elsen heard Him not,
Or soon forgot.
God spake to him by wealth, the world outpoured
Its treasures at his feet, and called him Lord;
Van Elsen’s heart grew fat
And proud thereat.
God spake the third time when the great world smiled,
And in the sunshine slew his little child;
Van Elsen like a tree
Fell hopelessly.
Then in the darkness came a voice which said,
“As thy heart bleedeth, so my heart hath bled,
As I have need of thee,
Thou needest me.”