And let these altars, wreathed with flowers
And piled with fruits, awake again
Thanksgivings for the golden hours,
The early and the latter rain!
1859
Read at the Friends’
School Anniversary, Providence, R. I.,
6th mo., 1860.
From the well-springs of Hudson, the sea-cliffs of
Maine,
Grave men, sober matrons, you gather again;
And, with hearts warmer grown as your heads grow more
cool,
Play over the old game of going to school.
All your strifes and vexations, your whims and complaints,
(You were not saints yourselves, if the children of
saints!)
All your petty self-seekings and rivalries done,
Round the dear Alma Mater your hearts beat as one!
How widely soe’er you have strayed from the
fold,
Though your “thee” has grown “you,”
and your drab blue and gold,
To the old friendly speech and the garb’s sober
form,
Like the heart of Argyle to the tartan, you warm.
But, the first greetings over, you glance round the
hall;
Your hearts call the roll, but they answer not all
Through the turf green above them the dead cannot
hear;
Name by name, in the silence, falls sad as a tear!
In love, let us trust, they were summoned so soon
rom the morning of life, while we toil through its
noon; They were frail like ourselves, they had needs
like our own, And they rest as we rest in God’s
mercy alone.
Unchanged by our changes of spirit and frame,
Past, now, and henceforward the Lord is the same;
Though we sink in the darkness, His arms break our
fall,
And in death as in life, He is Father of all!
We are older: our footsteps, so light in the
play
Of the far-away school-time, move slower to-day;—
Here a beard touched with frost, there a bald, shining
crown,
And beneath the cap’s border gray mingles with
brown.
But faith should be cheerful, and trust should be
glad,
And our follies and sins, not our years, make us sad.
Should the heart closer shut as the bonnet grows prim,
And the face grow in length as the hat grows in brim?
Life is brief, duty grave; but, with rain-folded wings,
Of yesterday’s sunshine the grateful heart sings;
And we, of all others, have reason to pay
The tribute of thanks, and rejoice on our way;
For the counsels that turned from the follies of youth;
For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth;
For the wounds of rebuke, when love tempered its edge;
For the household’s restraint, and the discipline’s
hedge;
For the lessons of kindness vouchsafed to the least
Of the creatures of God, whether human or beast,
Bringing hope to the poor, lending strength to the
frail,
In the lanes of the city, the slave-hut, and jail;
For a womanhood higher and holier, by all
Her knowledge of good, than was Eve ere her fall,—
Whose task-work of duty moves lightly as play,
Serene as the moonlight and warm as the day;
