Works

Is the pathway dark and dreary?
God's in His heaven!
Are you broken, heart-sick, weary?
God's in His heaven!
Dreariest roads shall have an ending,
Broken hearts are for God's mending....

We thank Thee, Lord,
For all Thy Golden Silences,--
For every Sabbath from the world's turmoil;
For every respite from the stress of life;--
Silence of moorlands rolling to the skies,...

Our Boys Who Have Gone to the Front

...

The sun shone white and fair,
This Eastertide,
Yet all its sweetness seemed but to deride
Our souls' despair;
For stricken hearts, and loss and pain,
Were everywhere.
We sang our Alleluias,--...

Flora, with wondrous feathers in her hat,
Rain-soaked, and limp, and feeling very flat,
With flowers of sorts in her full basket, sat,
Back to the railings, there by Charing Cross,...

He writes in characters too grand
For our short sight to understand;
We catch but broken strokes, and try
To fathom all the mystery
Of withered hopes, of death, of life,...

Winter hung about the ways,
Very loth to go.
Little Spring could not get past him,
Try she never so.

This side,--that side, everywhere,
Winter held the track....

"'Tis all a Chequer-Board of Nights and Days,
Where Detiny with men for pieces plays,
Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays."

Omar Khayyam.

...

"My heart to-day
Is strangely full of home!
How is it
With the dear ones over there?
Five years!
Five long-drawn years!
And one short moment is enough
To alter life's complexion for eternity!...

Lord, save their souls alive!
And--for the rest,--
We leave it all to Thee;
Thou knowest best.

Whether they live or die,
Safely they'll rest,
Every true soul of them,
Thy Chosen Guest....

(A WARNING)

"Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes, of a truth!
Thine asking is thine answer.
That self-condemning cry of Cain
Has been the plea of every selfish soul since then,...

Each man is Captain of his Soul,
And each man his own Crew,
But the Pilot knows the Unknown Seas,
And He will bring us through.


We break new seas to-day,--...

And we ourselves? Are our hands clean?
Are our souls free from blame
For this world-tragedy?
Nay then! Like all the rest,
We had relaxed our hold on higher things,...

"See this my garden,
Large and fair!"
--Thus, to his friend,
The Philosopher.

"'Tis not too long,"
His friend replied,
With truth exact,--
"Nor yet too wide.
But well compact,...

Is there, in you or me,
Seed of that poison-tree
Which, in its bitter fruiting, bore
Such vintage sore
Of red calamity--
Black wine of horror and of Death,
And soul-catastrophe?...

Just see that we get full value
Of that for which we have paid.
The price has been a heavy one,
But the goods are there--and we've paid-.
We've paid in our toil and our woundings;...

Pearl Iridescent! Pearl of the sea!
Shimmering, glimmering Pearl of the sea!
White in the sun-flecked Silver Sea,
White in the moon-decked Silver Sea,
White in the wrath of the Silver Sea,--...

What shall we be like when
We cast this earthly body and attain
To immortality?
What shall we be like then?

Ah, who shall say
What vast expansions shall be ours that day?...

"My lord, there came unto the gate
One, in such pitiful estate,
So all forlorn and desolate,
Ill-fed, ill-clad, of ills compact;
A leper too,--his poor flesh wracked
And dead, his very bones infect;...

Shadows are but for the moment--
Quickly past;
And then the sun the brighter shines
That it was overcast.

For Light is Life!
Gracious and sweet,...