[Illustration: 9039]
LOSE by the window I saw her,
``Only a bright young girl,
``With a tear on her drooping lashes,
```Half hid by a straying curl.=
``June sunshine was tempting her sorely,
```The children were playing near by,
``And still she sat with her sewing,
```And the tear-drop in her eye.=
``At last in anger she muttered,
```"So cruel, so hateful, and mean!
``I lose all the brightness and beauty,
```As I sit here sewing a seam.=
``"My thread grows tangled and dirty,
```My needle is sure to stick fast,
``And the girls are passing the window:
```Please tell me that work-time has past."=
``Ah, Daisy, dear child, in the future,
```As the shadows of life come and go,
``You will find some duties as irksome
```As the seam you are trying to sew.=
[Illustration: 0040]
``Threads will knot, Daisy dear, and the needles
```Will rust if you wet them with tears;
``And seams will grow rough to your fingers,
```When feeble and trembling with years.=
``Even brightness may pass like the sunshine,
```Your life holding one little gleam;
``But God is still watching my darling,
```He knows we are sewing a seam.=
``Dear Grandma is wiser but cheerful,
```She sits by the window to-day;
``Where the sunlight is kissing her forehead,
```And children are near her at play.=
``A smile in place of your tear-drop,
```Grey locks where your golden are seen;
``She says God's loved hath illumined
```Her life, and made easy each seam.=
``She, too, can think of a summer day,
```So sunny and bright in the past;
``But her lips always say, "Father take me,
```When play-time and work-time are past."=
[Illustration: 0041]