A Better Resurrection Your home is built in sunlight, mine in another day: 3247 Your home is close at hand, sweet friend, but mine is far away: Your bark is in the haven where you fain would be: I must launch out into the deep, across the unknown sea. You, white as dove or lily or spirit of the light: I, stained and cold and glad to hide in the cold dark night: Yet when your day is over, as mine is nearly done, You, like me, shall cross your hands and bow your graceful head: Yea, we twain shall sleep together in an equal bed. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] A BETTER RESURRECTION I HAVE no wit, no words, no tears; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesu, quicken me! My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk; Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perished thing, Melt and remold it, till it be A royal cup for Him my King: O Jesu, drink of me! Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] THE SUMMER IS ENDED WREATHE no more lilies in my hair, Pluck no more roses for my breast, Weep not for me when I am gone, Only a little while. Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894] A LITTLE PARABLE I MADE the cross myself whose weight Was later laid on me. This thought is torture as I toil Up life's steep Calvary. To think mine own hands drove the nails! I sang a merry song, And chose the heaviest wood I had To build it firm and strong. In the Hospital If I had guessed-if I had dreamed Its weight was meant for me, 3249 Anne Reeve Aldrich [1866–1892] MY CROSS My Lord would make a cross for me My Lord would make a cross for me In fashion light as cross could be If I had only bowed me low It never would have galled me so For aye, His cross is true and sure But I had fainted 'neath the load Had He not met me on the road And helped me on the way! Zitella Cocke [1847 IN THE HOSPITAL I LAY me down to sleep, With little thought or care Whether my waking find A bowing, burdened head, My good right hand forgets To march the weary march I am not eager, bold, Nor strong all that is past; I am ready not to do At last, at last. My half day's work is done, I give a patient God My patient heart, And grasp His banner still, Though all the blue be dim; These stripes as well as stars Lead after Him. Mary Woolsey Howland [1832-1864] WHEN If I were told that I must die to-morrow, That the next sun Which sinks would bear me past all fear and sorrow For any one, All the fight fought, all the short journey through, What should I do? I do not think that I should shrink or falter, But just go on, Doing my work, nor change nor seek to alter But rise and move and love and smile and pray And, lying down at night for a last sleeping, Say in that ear Which hearkens ever: "Lord, within Thy keeping And when to-morrow brings Thee nearer still, I might not sleep for awe; but peaceful, tender, All the night long; and when the morning splendor I think that I could smile-could calmly say, But if a wondrous hand from the blue yonder On which my life was writ, and I with wonder To a long century's end its mystic clue, What could I do, O blessed Guide and Master, Still to go on as now, not slower, faster, The road, although so very long it be, Step after step, feeling Thee close beside me, Although unseen, Through thorns, through flowers, whether the tempest hide Thee, Or heavens serene, Assured Thy faithfulness cannot betray, Thy love decay. may not know; my God, no hand revealeth Along the path a deepening shadow stealeth, To all my questioning thought, the time to tell; |