The Sin of Omission

It isn't the thing you do, dear,
It's the thing you leave undone
That gives you a bit of a heartache
At the setting of the sun.
The tender word forgotten;
The letter you did not write;
The flowers you did not send, dear,
Are your haunting ghosts at night.
The stone you might have lifted
Out of a brother's way;
The bit of hearthstone counsel
You were hurried too much to say;
The loving touch of the hand, dear,
The gentle, winning tone
Which you had no time nor thought for
With troubles enough of your own.
Those little acts of kindness
So easily out of mind,
Those chances to be angels
Which we poor mortals find—
They come in night and silence,
Each sad, reproachful wraith,
When hope is faint and flagging
And a chill has fallen on faith.
For life is all too short, dear,
And sorrow is all too great,
To suffer our slow compassion
That tarries until too late;
And it isn't the thing you do, dear,
It's the thing you leave undone
Which gives you a bit of a heartache
At the setting of the sun,
Margaret E. Sangster.

The Bible My Mother Gave Me

Give me that grand old volume, the gift of a mother's love,
Tho' the spirit that first taught me has winged its flight above.
Yet, with no legacy but this, she has left me wealth untold,
Yea, mightier than earth's riches, or the wealth of Ophir's gold.
When a child, I've kneeled beside her, in our dear old cottage home,
And listened to her reading from that prized and cherished tome,
As with low and gentle cadence, and a meek and reverent mien,
God's word fell from her trembling lips, like a presence felt and seen.
Solemn and sweet the counsels that spring from its open page,
Written with all the fervor and zeal of the prophet age;
Full of the inspiration of the holy bards who trod,
Caring not for the scoffer's scorn, if they gained a soul to God.
Men who in mind were godlike, and have left on its blazoned scroll
Food for all coming ages in its manna of the soul;
Who, through long days of anguish, and nights devoid of ease,
Still wrote with the burning pen of faith its higher mysteries.
I can list that good man yonder, in the gray church by the brook,
Take up that marvelous tale of love, of the story and the Book,
How through the twilight glimmer, from the earliest dawn of time,
It was handed down as an heirloom, in almost every clime.
How through strong persecution and the struggle of evil days
The precious light of the truth ne'er died, but was fanned to a beacon blaze.
How in far-off lands, where the cypress bends o'er the laurel bough,
It was hid like some precious treasure, and they bled for its truth, as now.
He tells how there stood around it a phalanx none could break,
Though steel and fire and lash swept on, and the cruel wave lapt the stake;
How dungeon doors and prison bars had never damped the flame,
But raised up converts to the creed whence Christian comfort came.
That housed in caves and caverns—how it stirs our Scottish blood!—
The Convenanters, sword in hand, poured forth the crimson flood;
And eloquent grows the preacher, as the Sabbath sunshine falls,
Thro' cobwebbed and checkered pane, a halo on the walls!
That still 'mid sore disaster, in the heat and strife of doubt,
Some bear the Gospel oriflamme, and one by one march out,
Till forth from heathen kingdoms, and isles beyond the sea,
The glorious tidings of the Book spread Christ's salvation free.
So I cling to my mother's Bible, in its torn and tattered boards,
As one of the greatest gems of art, and the king of all other hoards,
As in life the true consoler, and in death ere the Judgment call,
The guide that will lead to the shining shore, where the Father waits for all.

Lincoln, the Man of the People

This poem was read by Edwin Markham at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial at Washington, D.C.,
May 30, 1922. Before reading, he said: "No oration, no poem, can rise to the high level of this historic
hour. Nevertheless, I venture to inscribe this revised version of my Lincoln poem to this stupendous Lincoln
Memorial, to this far-shining monument of remembrance, erected in immortal marble to the honor of our
deathless martyr—the consecrated statesman, the ideal American, the ever-beloved friend of humanity."
When the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need,
She took the tried clay of the common road—
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
Dasht through it all a strain of prophecy;
Tempered the heap with thrill of human tears;
Then mixt a laughter with the serious stuff.
Into the shape she breathed a flame to light
That tender, tragic, ever-changing face;
And laid on him a sense of the Mystic Powers,
Moving—all husht—behind the mortal veil.
Here was a man to hold against the world,
A man to match the mountains and the sea.
The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;
The smack and tang of elemental things;
The rectitude and patience of the cliff;
The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves;
The friendly welcome of the wayside well;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The secrecy of streams that make their way
Under the mountain to the rifted rock;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking flower
As to the great oak flaring to the wind—
To the grave's low hill as to the Matterhorn
That shoulders out the sky. Sprung from the West,
He drank the valorous youth of a new world.
The strength of virgin forests braced his mind,
The hush of spacious prairies stilled his soul.
His words were oaks in acorns; and his thoughts
Were roots that firmly gript the granite truth.
Up from log cabin to the Capitol,
One fire was on his spirit, one resolve—
To send the keen ax to the root of wrong,
Clearing a free way for the feet of God,
The eyes of conscience testing every stroke,
To make his deed the measure of a man.
He built the rail-pile as he built the State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow;
The grip that swung the ax in Illinois
Was on the pen that set a people free.
So came the Captain with the mighty heart;
And when the judgment thunders split the house,
Wrenching the rafters from their ancient rest,
He held the ridgepole up, and spikt again
The rafters of the Home. He held his place—
Held the long purpose like a growing tree—
Held on through blame and faltered not at praise.
And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.
Edwin Markham.