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!"

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,
But these are all my sheaves.

And yet 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 (1832-1911]

TAKE HEART

ALL day the stormy wind has blown
From off the dark and rainy sea;
No bird has past the window flown,
The only song has been the moan

The wind made in the willow-tree.

This is the summer's burial-time:

She died when dropped the earliest leaves;

And, cold upon her rosy prime,

Fell direful autumn's frosty rime;

Yet I am not as one that grieves,

For well I know o'er sunny seas

The bluebird waits for April skies;

And at the roots of forest trees

The May-flowers sleep in fragrant ease,
And violets hide their azure eyes.

O thou, by winds of grief o'erblown
Beside some golden summer's bier,—

Forward

Take heart! Thy birds are only flown,
Thy blossoms sleeping, tearful sown,
To greet thee in the immortal year!
Edna Dean Proctor [1838-

3487

FORWARD

DREAMER, waiting for darkness with sorrowful, drooping eyes,

Linger not in the valley, bemoaning the day that is done! Climb the hills of morning and welcome the rosy skiesNever yet was the setting so fair as the rising sun!

Dear is the past; its treasures we hold in our hearts for aye; Woe to the hand that would scatter one wreath of its

garnered flowers;

But larger blessing and honor will come with the waking day

Hail, then, To-morrow, nor tarry with Yesterday's ghostly hours!

Mark how the summers hasten through blossoming fields

of June

To the purple lanes of the vintage and levels of golden corn;

"Splendors of life I lavish," runs nature's exultant rune, "For myriads press to follow, and the rarest are yet unborn."

Think how eager the earth is, and every star that shines, To circle the grander spaces about God's throne that be; Never the least moon loiters nor the largest sun declines— Forward they roll forever those glorious depths to see.

Dreamer, waiting for darkness with sorrowful, drooping

eyes,

Summers and suns go gladly, and wherefore dost thou repine?

Climb the hills of morning and welcome the rosy skies— The joy of the boundless future-nay, God himself is thine!

Edna Dean Proctor [1838

"THE HARVEST WAITS"

GOD hath been patient long. In eons past.

He plowed the waste of Chaos. He hath sown
The furrows with His worlds, and from His throne
Showered, like grain, planets upon the Vast.
What meed of glory hath He from the past?

Shall He not reap, who hears but prayer and groan?
The harvest waits. . . . He cometh to His own,—
He who shall scythe the starry host at last.
When the accumulated swarms of Death

Glut the rank worlds as rills are choked by leaves, Then shall God flail the million orbs, as sheaves Unfruitful gleaned; and, in His age sublime, Winnow the gathered stars, and with a breath Whirl the spurned chaff adown the void of Time!

Lloyd Mifflin [1846

ONE GIFT I ASK

THROUGH Weary days and sleepless nights

I fast and pray;

And of my listening Lord I ask

The same alway

That He will to His child impart

Pureness of heart.

The pure in heart God's face shall see.

And does not this

Include the whole ecstatic scale

Of promised bliss?

Can souls which His dear presence gain

More joy attain?

My Aim

I need not plead with Him to give

Me every grace

That makes the spirit beautiful;

For, if God's face

I am to see, He will bestow

All else, I know.

And so, through days of prayer and fast,

I only try

To win that purity of heart

Which, by and by,

The wondrous boon will gain for me,

God's face to see.

Virginia Bioren Harrison [18

3489

MY AIM

I LIVE for those who love me, whose hearts are kind and true,

For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits my spirit too;

For all human ties that bind me, for the task by God assigned me;

For the bright hopes yet to find me, and the good that I can do.

I live to learn their story who suffered for my sake;
To emulate their glory and follow in their wake:

Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, the heroic of all ages,
Whose deeds crowd history's pages, and time's great volume
make.

I live to hold communion with all that is divine,

To feel there is a union 'twixt nature's heart and mine;
To profit by affliction, reap truth from fields of fiction,
Grow wiser from conviction, and fulfil God's grand design.

I live to hail the season, by gifted ones foretold,
When man shall live by reason, and not alone by gold;
When man to man united, and every wrong thing righted,
The whole world shall be lighted, as Eden was of old.

I live for those who love me, for those who know me true; For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits my spirit too;

For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong that needs resistance,

For the future in the distance, and the good that I can do. G. Linnæus Banks [1821-1881]

THOU knowest, O my Father! Why should I
Weary high heaven with restless prayers and tears!
Thou knowest all! My heart's unuttered cry

Hath soared beyond the stars and reached Thine ears.

Thou knowest,-ah, Thou knowest! Then what need
O, loving God, to tell Thee o'er and o'er,

And with persistent iteration plead

As one who crieth at some closed door?

"Tease not!" we mothers to our children say,—
"Our wiser love will grant whate'er is best."
Shall we, Thy children, run to Thee alway,
Begging for this and that in wild unrest?

I dare not clamor at the heavenly gate,
Lest I should lose the high, sweet strains within;
O, Love Divine! I can but stand and wait

Till Perfect Wisdom bids me enter in!

Julia C. R. Dorr [1825

THE BURIAL OF MOSES

"And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Bethbut no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day."-DEUT. xxxiv. 6.

peor;

By Nebo's lonely mountain,

On this side Jordan's wave,

In a vale in the land of Moab,

There lies a lonely grave;

But no man built that sepulcher,

And no man saw it e'er;

For the angels of God upturned the sod

And laid the dead man there.