Though yet your valleys skulk in night,
  In God’s ripe fields the day is cried,
And reapers, with their sickles bright,
  Troop, singing, down the mountain-side: 
Come up, and feel what health there is
  In the frank Dawn’s delighted eyes,
As, bending with a pitying kiss,
  The night-shed tears of Earth she dries!

The Lord wants reapers:  oh, mount up,
  Before night comes, and says, ‘Too late!’
Stay not for taking scrip or cup,
  The Master hungers while ye wait;
’Tis from these heights alone your eyes
  The advancing spears of day can see,
That o’er the eastern hill-tops rise,
  To break your long captivity.

II

Lone watcher on the mountain-height,
  It is right precious to behold
The first long surf of climbing light
  Flood all the thirsty east with gold;
But we, who in the shadow sit,
  Know also when the day is nigh,
Seeing thy shining forehead lit
  With his inspiring prophecy.

Thou hast thine office; we have ours;
  God lacks not early service here,
But what are thine eleventh hours
  He counts with us for morning cheer;
Our day, for Him, is long enough,
  And when He giveth work to do,
The bruised reed is amply tough
  To pierce the shield of error, through.

But not the less do thou aspire
  Light’s earlier messages to preach;
Keep back no syllable of fire,
  Plunge deep the rowels of thy speech. 
Yet God deems not thine aeried sight
  More worthy than our twilight dim;
For meek Obedience, too, is Light,
  And following that is finding Him.

THE CAPTIVE

It was past the hour of trysting,
  But she lingered for him still;
Like a child, the eager streamlet
  Leaped and laughed adown the hill,
Happy to be free at twilight
  From its toiling at the mill.

Then the great moon on a sudden
  Ominous, and red as blood,
Startling as a new creation,
  O’er the eastern hilltop stood,
Casting deep and deeper shadows
  Through the mystery of the wood.

Dread closed fast and vague about her,
  And her thoughts turned fearfully
To her heart, if there some shelter
  From the silence there might be,
Like bare cedars leaning inland
  From the blighting of the sea.

Yet he came not, and the stillness
  Dampened round her like a tomb;
She could feel cold eyes of spirits
  Looking on her through the gloom,
She could hear the groping footsteps
  Of some blind, gigantic doom.

Suddenly the silence wavered
  Like a light mist in the wind,
For a voice broke gently through it,
  Felt like sunshine by the blind,
And the dread, like mist in sunshine,
  Furled serenely from her mind.

’Once my love, my love forever,
  Flesh or spirit, still the same,
If I failed at time of trysting,
  Deem then not my faith to blame;
I, alas, was made a captive,
  As from Holy Land I came.