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By Ethna Carbery

Be pitiful, my God!

No hard-won gifts I bring—

But empty, pleading hands

To Thee at evening.

Spring came, white-browed and young,

I, too, was young with Spring.

There was a blue, blue heaven

Above a skylark’s wing.

Youth is the time for joy,

I cried, it is not meet

To mount the heights of toil

With child-soft feet.

When Summer walked the land

In Passion’s red arrayed,

Under green sweeping boughs

My couch I made.

The noon-tide heat was sore,

I slept the Summer through;

An angel waked me—“Thou

Hast work to do.”

I rose and saw the sheaves

Upstanding in a row;

The reapers sang Thy praise

While passing to and fro.

My hands were soft with ease,

Long were the Autumn hours;

I left the ripened sheaves

For poppy-flowers.

But lo! now Winter glooms,

And gray is in my hair,

Whither has flown the world

I found so fair?

My patient God, forgive!

Praying Thy pardon sweet

I lay a lonely heart

Before Thy feet.