| |
Or, Blessings of To-day
IF we knew the woe and heart-ache | |
| That await us on the road; | |
| If our lips could taste the wormwood, | |
| If our backs could feel the load; | |
| Would we waste to-day in wishing | 5 |
| For a time that ne’er may be? | |
| Would we wait in such impatience | |
| For our ships to come from sea? | |
| |
| If we knew the baby fingers | |
| Pressed against the window-pane | 10 |
| Would be cold and stiff to-morrow,— | |
| Never trouble us again; | |
| Would the bright eyes of our darling | |
| Catch the frown upon our brow? | |
| Would the print of baby fingers | 15 |
| Vex us then as they do now? | |
| |
| Ah! those little ice-cold fingers, | |
| How they point our memories back | |
| To the hasty words and actions | |
| Strewn along the backward track! | 20 |
| How those little hands remind us, | |
| As in snowy grace they lie, | |
| Not to scatter thorns, but roses, | |
| For the reaping by and by. | |
| |
| Strange, we never prize the music | 25 |
| Till the sweet-voiced birds have flown; | |
| Strange, that we should slight the violets | |
| Till the lovely flowers are gone; | |
| Strange, that summer skies and sunshine | |
| Never seem one half so fair | 30 |
| As when winter’s snowy pinions | |
| Shake the white down in the air. | |
| |
| Lips from which the seal of silence | |
| None but God can roll away | |
| Never blossomed in such beauty | 35 |
| As adorns the mouth to-day; | |
| And sweet words that freight our memory | |
| With their beautiful perfume | |
| Come to us in sweeter accents | |
| Through the portals of the tomb. | 40 |
| |
| Let us gather up the sunbeams | |
| Lying all around our path; | |
| Let us keep the wheat and roses, | |
| Casting out the thorns and chaff; | |
| Let us find our sweetest comfort | 45 |
| In the blessings of to-day, | |
| With a patient hand removing | |
| All the briers from the way. | |
| |
