It sings of them I loved and left of old,
Of my fond hope to bring a worthy prize—
Some well-earned token, better far than gold,
And lay it humbly down before their eyes.
And tell them it were rightly theirs—not mine,
An harvest come of their own word and deed;
I strove with tares that threatened my design
To make the crop as noble as the seed.
So they might see it paid—that life they knew—
A toilsome web and knit of many a skein,