The Master
The Master many a day
In pain and darkness wrought:
Through death to life He held His way,
All lands the glory caught.
And He unlocked the gain
Shut up in grievous loss,
And made the stairs to heaven as plain
As His uplifted cross--
The stairs of pain and woe
In all the work on earth,
Up which the patient toilers go
To their eternal birth.
O Master, Master mine,
I read the legend now,
To work and suffer is divine,
All radiant on Thy brow.
Life in Death
Strong children of decay,
Ye live by perishing:
To-morrow thrives on dead to-day,
And joy on suffering.
The labor of your hearts,
Like that of brain and hands,
Shall be for gain in other marts,
For bread in other lands.
And will ye now despond
Amid consuming toil,
When there is hope and joy beyond
Which death can not despoil?
Herein all comfort is:
In usefulness and zeal,
The Lord announces who are His
And gives eternal weal.
Through stern and ruthless years
Beyond the ken of man,
All filled with ruin, pain, and tears,
Has God worked out His plan.
Change on the heels of change,
Like blood-hounds in the chase,
Has swept the earth in tireless range,
Spangled with heavenly grace.
At last the mystery
Of the great Cross of Christ,
Red with a world-wide agony,
The God-Man sacrificed;
And from the Sacrifice
The seven great notes of Peace,
Which pierce the clouds beneath all skies
Till pain and sorrow cease.
The Mind of Christ