LITMIR.BIZ

      O Lord, I am so used to all the byways

      Throughout Thy devious world,

      The little hill-paths, yea, and the great highways

      Where saints are safely whirled!

      And there are crooked ways, forbidden pleasures,

      That lured me with their spell;

      But there I lingered not, and found no treasures—

      Though in the mire I fell.

      And now I’m old and worn, and, scarcely seeing

      The beauties of Thy work,

      I catch faint glimpses of the shadows fleeing

      Through valleys in the murk;

      Yet I can feel my way—my mem’ry guides me;

      I bear the yoke and smile.

      I’m used to life, and nothing wounds or chides me;

      Lord, let me live awhile!

      And then, dear Lord, I still can feel the thrilling

      Of Nature in the Spring—

      The uplift of Thy hills, the song-birds trilling,

      The lyric joy they bring.

      I’m not too old to see the regal beauty

      Of moon and stars and sun;

      Nature can still reveal to me my duty

      Till my long task is done.

      O Lord, to me the pageant is entrancing—

      The march of States and Kings!

      I keenly watch the human race advancing

      And see Man master Things:

      From him who read the secret of the thunder

      And made the lightning kind,

      Down to this marvel—all the growing wonder

      Of force controlled by Mind.

      And this dear land of ours, the freeman’s Nation!

      Lord, let me live and see

      Fulfilment of our fathers’ aspiration,

      When each man’s really free!

      When all the strength and skill that move the mountains,

      And pile up riches great,

      Shall sweeten patriotism at its fountains

      And purify the State!

      But there are closer ties than these that bind me

      And make me long to stay

      And linger in the dusk where Death may find me

      On Thine own chosen day;

      There’s one who walks beside me in the gloaming

      And holds my faltering hand—

      Without her guidance I can make no homing

      In any distant land.

      Some day when we are tired, like children playing,

      And wearied drop our toys—

      When all the work and burden of our staying

      Has mingled with our joys—

      With those we love around—our eyelids drooping,

      Too spent with toil to weep—

      Like some kind nurse o’er drowsy children stooping,

      Lord, take us home to sleep!

      Like the uncounted years of God it rolls

      From out the sky. The light of heaven shines

      Upon its wrinkled brow, that seems a part

      Of that stupendous dome of boundless blue

      Where, like a pebble in the ocean depths,

      This little world is lost. The sparkling sun

      Plays gently in the deep green, icy clefts

      Like moonlight in the tender eyes of one

      Who looks to heaven to find her lover’s face.

      Silent, serene, implacable it stands—

      A mighty symbol of the Force that moved

      Across the surface of the youthful earth

      And scored the continents with valleys deep,

      As children write upon the yielding sand.

      Back to the dawn of things its lineage runs—

      Countless ages back to that bleak time

      When frightful monsters played upon the hills—

      Always the same, yet moving slowly onward,

      In heaven its head, its feet upon the world.

      The Rhone that trickles from the glacier’s edge—

      Makes valleys smile with grain and flower and fruit

      And turns the wheels that forge the tools of trade—

      Is but the lash with which the giant plays

      And spins the tops that swarm with struggling men.

      “What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him?”—

      This pleasure or this pain, this wealth or want,

      This tragic comedy we call our life!

      Across the meadows as the evening falls

      A shepherd drives his sheep, and fondly bears

      Above the rocky stream the weakling lamb;

      The children hear the father’s kindly voice

      And run to greet and cheer his late return,

      While from his humble cottage gleams a light.

      The sheep are nestled in their sheltering fold—

      The door springs open to a welcome cry,

      And all at last are safe within the Home.

      In cold and awful majesty it stands

      Against the darkening sky,—Force without warmth,

      Strength without passion.

      But at the touch

      Of homely human ways its terrors flee

      And Force is swallowed up in Life with Love.

      Young to the end through sympathy with youth,

      Gray man of learning—champion of truth!

      Direct in rugged speech, alert in mind,

      He felt his kinship with all humankind,

      And never feared to trace development

      Of high from low—assured and full content

      That man paid homage to the Mind above,

      Uplifted by the “Royal Law of Love.”

      The laws of nature that he loved to trace

      Have worked, at last, to veil from us his face;

      The dear old elms and ivy-covered walls

      Will miss his presence, and the stately halls

      His trumpet-voice; while in their joys

      Sorrow will shadow those he called “my boys”!