| James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902. | | | | January 23 | | Phillips Brooks | | By Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) |
| | (Died Jan. 23, 1893)
PERHAPS we do not know how much of God | |
Was walking with us.
Surely not forlorn | |
| Are men, when such great overflow of heaven | |
| Brings down the light of the eternal morn | |
| Into the earth’s deep shadows, where they plod, | 5 |
The slaves of sorrow.
Something of divine | |
| Was in his nature, open to the source | |
| Of love, that master of primeval force, | |
| As, answering freshly their unfailing sign, | |
| To the early and the latter rain the sod | 10 |
| Lies bare, and drinking in by morn and even | |
| The precious dews that lift it into flower | |
| Distilled again in fragrance every hour. | |
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| I think if Jesus, whom he loved as Lord, | |
| Were here again, in such guise might He go, | 15 |
| So bind all creeds as with a golden cord, | |
| So with the saint speak, with the sinner so. | |
| And then remembering all the torrent’s hush, | |
| Of praise and blessing o’er the listening hush, | |
| Remembering the lightning of the glance. | 20 |
| Remembering the lifted countenance | |
| White with the prophet’s glory that it wore, | |
| With the Holy Spirit shining through the clay, | |
| Prophet—yea, I say unto you and more | |
| Than a prophet was with us but yesterday. | 25 | | | |
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