Those willing hands--they’re still to-night--
The life has from them fled;
They’re folded from the longing sight,
So cold and pale and dead.
The busy veins have idle grown,
Like a long famished rill,
That once in such an eager tone
Called soft from hill to hill.
Dear hands, I’ve felt their pressure oft,
In a sad time gone by;
They moved about the years as soft
As clouds move through the sky.
They screened the rainstorm from my heart,
And let the moonlight in,
And showed, while shadows fell athwart,
Tracks where the sun had been.
They were such willing, willing hands,
They stilled the mournful tear,
Unwound the pattern of God’s plans,
And made his problems clear.
They did not reach to high-grown bowers,
Where rarest blossoms bloom;
But culled the blessed, purer flowers,
And bore them to the tomb.
Poor hands--they are so still and white,
The rose that shared their rest
Is shrinking from the long, dark night,
And falling on her breast.
The wreath is wilted on the mound
Where long the sunshine stands,
But angels have the sleeper found,
And clasped those willing hands.
Look Into the Past.
Look into the past--there are pictures
Detaining the sunshine of May,
All aquiver with light they turn to the sight,
Like a flower that faces the day.
How restful the hillsides and shady!
The brook like a song passeth by,
And the trespassing moon floats about through noon,
Like a bubble blown up in the sky.
Look into the past! It is happy;
Its voices are voices of youth;
There is no idle jest to disturb the heart’s rest,
And its banners wear mottoes of truth;
Look back at the glad, happy faces
That walk with our childhood abreast,
And show me to-day, though it be miles away,
A spot that can offer such rest.
Say not that the years long escaping,
Show graves of a cankering joy.
Because we have found that new pleasures abound,
Must we cast off our first childish toy?
Because some old love has disturbed us,
And filled a lost hour full of gloom,
Are we never to go, when the sun lieth low,
And stand by the neglected tomb?
A Little Face.