Forward

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

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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 skiesThe 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?

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

MY AIM

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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 "

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 [1825-1913]

THE BURIAL OF MOSES

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

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.

The Burial of Moses

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That was the grandest funeral

That ever passed on earth;
Yet no man heard the trampling,
Or saw the train go forth:
Noiselessly as the daylight

Comes when the night is done,

And the crimson streak on ocean's cheek

Grows into the great sun;

Noiselessly as the spring-time
Her crown of verdure weaves,
And all the trees on all the hills
Unfold their thousand leaves:

So without sound of music
Or voice of them that wept,

Silently down from the mountain's crown
The great procession swept.

Perchance the bald old eagle
On gray Beth-peor's height
Out of his rocky eyrie
Looked on the wondrous sight;
Perchance the lion stalking

Still shuns that hallowed spot;

For beast and bird have seen and heard

That which man knoweth not.

But, when the warrior dieth,

His comrades of the war,

With arms reversed and muffled drums,

Follow the funeral car:

They show the banners taken;

They tell his battles won;

And after him lead his masterless steed,

While peals the minute-gun.

Amid the noblest of the land

Men lay the sage to rest,

And give the bard an honored place

With costly marble dressed,