CALLING

In the hush of April weather,
With the bees in budding heather,
And the white clouds floating, floating,
and the sunshine falling broad;
While my children down the hill
Run and leap, and I sit still,
Through the silence, through the silence
art thou calling, O my God?

Through my husband's voice that prayeth,
Though he knows not what he sayeth,
Is it thou who, in thy holy word, hast
solemn words for me?
And when he clasps me fast,
And smiles fondly o'er the past,
And talks hopeful of the future, Lord,
do I hear only thee?

Not in terror nor in thunder
Comes thy voice, although it sunder
Flesh from spirit, soul from body,
human bliss from human pain;
All the work that was to do,
All the joys so sweet and new,
Which thou shew'dst me in a vision,
Moses-like, and hid'st again.

From this Pisgah, lying humbled,
The long desert where I stumbled
And the fair plains I shall never reach
seem equal, clear, and far:
On this mountain-top of ease
Thou wilt bury me in peace;
While my tribes march onward, onward
unto Canaan and to war.

In my boy's loud laughter ringing,
In the sigh, more soft than singing,
Of my baby girl that nestles up unto this mortal breast,
After every voice most dear,
Comes a whisper, "Rest not here."
And the rest thou art preparing, is it best, Lord, is it best?

Lord, a little, little longer!
Sobs the earth love, growing stronger;
He will miss me, and go mourning through his solitary days,
And heaven were scarcely heaven
If these lambs that thou hast given
Were to slip out of our keeping and be lost in the world's ways.

Lord, it is not fear of dying,
Nor an impious denying
Of thy will--which evermore on earth, in heaven, be done;
But a love that, desperate, clings
Unto these, my precious things,
In the beauty of the daylight, and glory of the sun.

Ah! thou still art calling, calling,
With a soft voice unappalling;
And it vibrates in far circles through the everlasting years;
When thou knockest, even so!
I will arise and go:
What, my little ones, more violets? nay, be patient; mother hears!

--Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

THE "SILVER CORD IS LOOSED"