Last Verses

Age or youth are nothing, are nothing or soon or late,
When the heart to heart makes answer and joyful face to face.

Where hast thou tarried, my Love, while I waited and missed thee long,
One of the two shall question, and the other shall make reply,
In a voice of gladness and triumph, less like unto speech than song,
“I knew not that I was a hungered till God sent thee as supply.”

The world may crowd and question, but friends are always alone,
Set in bright atmosphere, like a planet in far-off skies;
A touch, a glance, a sigh, love comprehends its own,
And words are feeble and poor compared with the spark of the eyes.

The undug gold in the mine, the pearl in the deep, deep seas,
The gem which lies undiscovered, are the daydreams of the earth;
But the love unreckoned, unhoped for, which is mightier far than these,
Is the miracle of Heaven for the souls which it counts as worth.

ROSE TERRY COOKE

OUT of the life that was so hard to bear,
Clouded by sorrow and perplexed by care,
Out of the long watch and the heavy night,
She has gone forth into the light of light.

A tropic-blossom, warm with sun and scent,
Set in New England’s chill environment;
Through beat of storm and stress of winter’s cold,
She kept the summer in her heart of gold.

Love was the life which pulsed her being through;
No task too hard if set by Love to do,
No pain too sharp if Love called to endure,
No weariness she knew if Love was sure.

Her rose of Love was set with many a thorn,
Clouds veiled and hid the promise of her morn;
Thirsting and spent, she journeyed on unfed,
While Love, too often, gave her stones for bread.

But still ’mid waning hopes and deepening fears
And brave, hard strivings through the ebbing years,
Lifting her up when she was like to fall,
Love led her to the land where Love is all.

Heaven has received her as a welcome guest,
Balming earth’s tire with compensating rest,
Healing earth’s grievous wound with sure content, —
The sense of home after long banishment.

But more to her than smile of vanished kin,
Or hands outstretched to greet and draw her in,
Or “Bonded Walls” of amethyst unpriced,
Is the clear vision of the Face of Christ!

That Face Divine, which, in her girlhood’s day
Seeing, she loved, and never looked away,
Which, like a star in the dim firmament,
Guided her steps and moved where’er she went.

Out of the life that was not always sweet,
Out of the puzzle and the day’s defeat,
Out of earth’s hindering and alien zone,
The Lord of Love has led her to her own.

INTO THE DEEP

“LORD, we have toiled all day and taken naught.”
Thus spoke the fishers by the darkling sea,
While the dusk deepened, and the shadows drew
Over the desert sand-dunes and the blue
Waters of Galilee.

“What shall we do, Lord?” And the Master said:
“Spread sail, and let the breeze of evening waft
To the deep seas; quit the familiar shore,
And let your nets down fearlessly once more,
As for a certain draught.”

Lord, we have toiled in vain, even as these,
Dragging our nets unfruitful waters through;
Not one poor fish rewards our pains all day,
And, like the twelve of old, we come and say,
“Master, what shall we do?”

And still for us, as then, the answer sounds,
Making the very hearts within us leap:
“Leave the safe shallows where the ripples play,
The sluggish inlet and confining bay —
Push out into the deep.

“Strain toward the mighty ocean of God’s love,
His great Love’s all unfathomed energies,
Where never plummet reached or bound was set.
Quit ye like valiant fishermen, and let
Your nets down in deep seas.

“Those rich, rewarding waters shall not fail,
Till the nets break the fish shall crowd therein;
And I, the Master, waiting other where,