OH God! if I do my duty
And walk in the thorny way,
Will you pay me with heavens of beauty,
Millions of lives away?
Will you give me the music of heaven,
And the joy that none understands,
In place of what life would have given
If I had held out my hands?
I have lived in a narrow prison,
I have writhed 'neath a bitter creed,
And I dare to say that no heaven can pay
The renounced dream and deed,
But when my life's portal closes,
If you have no heaven to spare
God! give me a garden of roses,
And some one to walk with there.
II.
MUMMY WHEAT.
LAID close to Death, these many thousand years,
In this small seed Life hid herself and smiled;
So well she hid, Death was at least beguiled,
Set free the grain--and lo! the sevenfold ears!
Warmed by the sun, wooed by the wind's soft word,
Under blue canopy they hold their state:
For this, ah, was it not worth while to wait
Through all the centuries of hope deferred?
What could they know who laid the seed with Death
Of this Divine fruition fixed and planned?
Love--since Life parts us--lend my hand your hand
And look with me into the eyes of faith.
For here between your hand and mine there lies
A little seed we trust to Death to keep
Through unimagined centuries of sleep
Until the day when Life shall bid it rise.
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