Step by step and mile by mile,- Nothing else is worth the while Getting back to God. Light and shadow fill each day, Do not wear a mournful face Getting back to God. Scatter sunshine on the place Going back to God. Take what pleasure you can find, But where'er your paths may wind, Keep the purpose well in mind,— Getting back to God. WOMANHOOD. HE must be honest, both in thought and deed, SHE Of generous impulse, and above all greed; Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf, But life's best blessings for her higher self, Which means the best for all. She must have faith, To make good friends of Trouble, Pain and Death, And understand their Message. She should be As redolent with tender sympathy As is a rose with fragrance. Cheerfulness Should be her mantle, even tho' her dress May be of Sorrow's weaving. On her face A loyal nature leaves its seal of grace, Not that chill chastity which seems austere— L MORNING PRAYER. ET me to-day do something that shall take A little sadness from the world's vast store, And may I be so favored as to make Of joy's too scanty sum a little more. Let me not hurt, by any selfish deed Or thoughtless word, the heart of foe or friend; Nor would I pass, unseeing, worthy need, Or sin by silence when I should defend. However meager be my worldly wealth Let me give something that shall aid my kind, A word of courage, or a thought of health, Dropped as I pass for troubled hearts to find. Let me to-night look back across the span 'Twixt dawn and dark, and to my conscience say Because of some good act to beast or man "The world is better that I lived to-day." THE VOICES OF THE PEOPLE. H, I hear the people calling through the day time and the night time, They are calling, they are crying for the coming of the right time. It behooves you, men and women, it behooves you to be heeding, For there lurks a note of menace underneath their plaintive pleading. Let the land usurpers listen, let the greedy-hearted ponder, On the meaning of the murmur, rising here and swelling yonder, Swelling louder, waxing stronger, like a storm-fed stream that courses Through the valleys, down abysses, growing, gain. ing with new forces. Day by day the river widens, that great river of opinion, And its torrent beats and plunges at the base of greed's dominion. Though you dam it by oppression and fling golden bridges o'er it, Yet the day and hour advances when in fright you flee before it. Yes, I hear the people calling, through the night time and the day time, Wretched toilers in life's autumn, weary young ones in life's May time— They are crying, they are calling for their share of work and pleasure, You are heaping high your coffers while you give them scanty measure, You have stolen God's wide acres, just to glut your swollen purses— Oh, restore them to His children ere their pleading turns to curses. |