Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
—H. W. Longfellow.
High thoughts and noble in all lands
Help me: my soul is fed by such
But ah, the touch of life and hands,
The human touch!
Warm, vital, close, life's symbols dear,
These need I most, and now, and here.
—Richard Burton.
O I will trudge with heart elate,
And feet with courage shod,
For that which men call chance and fate
Is the handiwork of God.
—Alice Cary.
SERVICE
Yet, who, looking backward o'er his year,
Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears,
If he hath been
Permitted, weak and sinful as he was,
To cheer and aid in some ennobling cause
His fellow men?
If he hath hidden the outcast, or let in
A ray of sunshine to a cell of sin—
If he hath lent
Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need,
Over the suffering, mindless of his creed
Or home, hath bent,
He hath not lived in vain, and while he gives
The praise to Him, in whom he moves and lives,
With thankful heart;
He gazes backward, and with hope before,
Knowing that from his works he nevermore
Can henceforth part.
—Whittier.
Whichever way the wind doth blow
Some heart is glad to have it so;
Then blow it east or blow it west,
The wind that blows, that wind is best.
—Caroline A. Mason.