C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Keble

In silence,***

Steals on soft-handed Charity,

Tempering her gifts, that seem so free,

By time and place,

Till not a woe the bleak world see,

But finds her grace.

Sprinkled along the waste of years

Full many a soft green isle appears:

Pause where we may upon the desert road,

Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.

The loveliest flowers the closest cling to earth,

And they first feel the sun: so violets blue;

So the soft star-like primrose—drenched in dew—

The happiest of spring’s happy, fragrant birth.

The sun and every vassal star,

All space, beyond the soar of angel’s wings,

Wait on His word: and yet He stays His His car

For every sigh a contrite suppliant brings.

’Tis sweet, as year by year we lose

Friends out of sight, in faith to muse

How grows in Paradise our store.

When the shore is won at last,

Who will count the billows past?

Why should we faint and fear to live alone,

Since all alone, so Heaven has will’d, we die,

Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,

Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.

The childlike faith that asks not sight, waits not for wonder or for sign, believes, because it loves, aright, shall see things greater, things divine.

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