A Few More Verses

Nothing was prophesied or done
To mark it from the other grain.

Coarse, brawny hands let down the net
When the Lord spake and ordered so;
They hauled the meshes, heavy-wet,
Just as in other days, and set
Their backs to labor, bending low;

But quivering, leaping from the lake
The marvellous, shining burdens rise
Until the laden meshes break,
And, all amazèd, no man spake,
But gazed with wonder in his eyes.

So still, dear Lord, in every place
Thou standest by the toiling folk
With love and pity in thy face,
And givest of thy help and grace
To those who meekly bear the yoke.

Not by strange sudden change and spell,
Baffling and darkening Nature’s face;
Thou takest the things we know so well
And buildest on them thy miracle, —
The heavenly on the commonplace.

The lives which seem so poor, so low,
The hearts which are so cramped and dull,
The baffled hopes, the impulse slow,
Thou takest, touchest all, and lo!
They blossom to the beautiful.

We need not wait for thunder-peal
Resounding from a mount of fire,
While round our daily paths we feel
Thy sweet love and thy power to heal,
Working in us thy full desire.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

ORCHID, chance-sown among the moorland heather,
Scarce seen or tasted by the infrequent bee,
Set mid rough mountain growths, lashed by wild weather,
With none to foster thee.

We watch thee fronting all the blasts of heaven,
Thy slender rootlets grappled fast to rock,
Enduring from thy morning to thy even
The buffet and the shock.

Never thy sun vouchsafed a cloudless shining,
Never the wind was tempered to thy pain;
No cloud turned out for thee its silver lining,
No rainbow followed rain.

Nourished mid hardness, learning patience slowly
As hearts must do which know no other food,
Duty and Memory, companions holy,
Shared thy bleak solitude.

Cold touch of Memory, strong chill hand of Duty,
These held thee fast and ruled thee to the end,
Until, with smile mysterious in its beauty,
Came Death, rewarding friend.

Earth gave thee scanty cheer, but earth is ended,
Finished the years of thwarted sacrifice.
We see thee walking forward, well attended,
Led into Paradise!

Heaven is twice Heaven to one who, hungry-hearted,
Goes thither knowing no satisfaction here;
And when we thank the Lord for those departed
In this sure faith and fear,

We think of thee, lonely no more forever,
And tasting, while the eternal years unroll,
That joy of Heaven, which like a flowing river
Satisfies every soul.

END AND MEANS

WE spend our strength in labor day by day,
We find new strength replacing old alway;
And still we cheat ourselves, and still we say:

“No man would work except to win some prize;
We work to turn our hopes to certainties, —
For gold, or gear, or favor in men’s eyes.”

And all the while the goal toward which we strain —
Up hill and down, in sunshine and in rain,
Heedless of toil, if so we may attain —

Is but a lure, a heavenly-set decoy
To exercised endeavor, full employ
Of every power, which is man’s highest joy.

And work becomes the end, reward the means,