The time for toil is past, and night has come--
The last and saddest of the harvest eves;
Worn out with labor, long and wearisome,
Drooping and faint, the reapers hasten home,
Each laden with his sheaves.
Last of the laborers, thy feet I gain,
Lord of the harvest! and my spirit grieves
That I am burdened not so much with grain
As with a heaviness of heart and brain;
Master, behold my sheaves.
Few, light, and worthless--yet their trifling weight
Through all my frame a weary aching leaves;
For long I struggled with my hapless fate,
And stayed and toiled till it was dark and late--
Yet these are all my sheaves.
Full well I know I have more tares than wheat,
Brambles and flowers, dry stalks and withered leaves;
Wherefore I blush and weep as at thy feet
I kneel down reverently and repeat,
"Master, behold my sheaves!"
I know these blossoms clustering heavily,
With evening dew upon their folded leaves,
Can claim no value or utility--
Therefore shall fragrancy and beauty be
The glory of my sheaves.
So do I gather strength and hope anew;
For well I know thy patient love perceives
Not what I did, but what I strove to do,
And though the full ripe ears be sadly few
Thou wilt accept my sheaves.
--Elizabeth Akers.
I pray not that
Men tremble at
My power of place,
And lordly sway;
I only pray for simple grace
To look my neighbor in the face
Full honestly from day to day.
--James Whitcomb Riley.
If thou art blest,
Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest
On the dark edges of each cloud that lies
Black in thy brother's skies.
If thou art sad,
Still be in thy brother's gladness glad.
--Hamilton.
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
--Alfred Tennyson.
Praise not thy work, but let thy work praise thee;
For deeds, not words, make each man's memory stable.
If what thou dost is good, its good all men will see;
Musk by its smell is known, not by its label.
When thou art fain to trace a map of thine own heart,
An undiscovered land set down the largest part.
--Richard Chenevix Trench.
Patient, resigned and humble wills
Impregnably resist all ills.
--Thomas Ken.
He is one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need.
--William Wordsworth.
Be not too ready to condemn
The wrong thy brothers may have done:
Ere ye too harshly censure them
For human faults, ask, "Have I none?"
--Eliza Cook.
Search thine own heart. What paineth thee
In others in thyself may be;
All dust is frail, all flesh is weak;
Be thou the true man thou dost seek.
--John Greenleaf Whittier.
Through wish, resolve, and act, our will
Is moved by undreamed forces still;
And no man measures in advance
His strength with untried circumstance.
--John Greenleaf Whittier.
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone.
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
In the deed that no man knoweth,
Where no praiseful trumpet bloweth,
Where he may not reap who soweth,
There, Lord, let my heart serve thee.
O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion.
--Robert Burns.