Day by day, oh Master, make me
With that blessed life of Thine,
Day by day, oh Lord, enfold me
With Thy mighty grace divine.
Day by day, oh Saviour, take me
For Thy servant, willing, free,
Day by day, oh Master, make me
All that Thou wouldst have me be.
Day by day, oh Saviour, keep me
Just abiding in Thy love,
Simply trusting and obeying,
Looking unto Thee above.
Day by day, oh Saviour, give me
All the strength I need so much,
And with Thee and Thy blest Spirit,
Ever keep me, Lord, in touch.

Day at the beach.
We are walking.
Because of the ocean's roar, we say little.
Besides, there is a breeze.
Every two or three steps
you furrow the sand with your toe.
Little by little, I fill my pockets
with seashells of different shapes,
small, empty, all familiar ones.
Continually your right hand
parts your hair from your eyes.
I watch you doing it, and you smile.

Along the shore of your eyes
I bend to pick up your thoughts.
One by one
I fill my heart with them.

A DAY and then a week passed by:
The redbird hanging from the sill
Sang not; and all were wondering why
It was so still —
When one bright morning, loud and clear,
Its whistle smote my drowsy ear,
Ten times repeated, till the sound
Filled every echoing niche around;
And all things earliest loved by me, —
The bird, the brook, the flower, the tree, —
Came back again, as thus I heard
The cardinal bird.

Where maple orchards towered aloft,
And spicewood bushes spread below,
Where skies were blue, and winds were soft,

Day and night my thoughts incline
To the blandishments of wine:
Jars were made to drain, I think,
Wine, I know, was made to drink.

When I die, (the day be far!)
Should the potters make a jar
Out of this poor clay of mine,
Let the jar be filled with wine!

A day, a night, an hour of sweet content
Is worth a world consumed in fretful care.
Unequal Gods! in your arbitrament
To sort us days whose sorrows endless are!
And yet what were it, as a fading flower,
To swim in bliss a day, a night, and hour?

What plague is greater than the grief of mind?
The grief of mind that eats in every vein,
In every vein that leaves such clods behind,
Such clods behind as breed such bitter pain,
So bitter pain that none shall ever find,
What plague is greater than the grief of mind.

Dawn turned on her purple pillow
— And late, late came the winter day,
Snow was curved to the boughs of the willow.
— The sunless world was white and grey.

At noon we heard a blue-jay scolding,
— At five the last thin light was lost
From snow-banked windows faintly holding
— The feathery filigree of frost.

Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford:
Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared;
There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass,
And Moshy might menace, and Stuart might mass;
But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger scorn,
As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the morn.
Those who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!

How we chafed at delay! How we itched to be on!
How we yearned for the fray where the battle-reek shone!
It was forward , not halt , stirred the fire in our veins,

Dawn from the Foretop! Dawn from the Barrel!
A scurry of feet with a roar overhead;
The master-watch wildly pointing to Northward,
Where the herd in front of The Eagle was spread!

Steel-planked and sheathed like a battleship's nose,
She battered her path through the drifting floes;
Past slob and growler we drove, and rammed her
Into the heart of the patch and jammed her.
There were hundreds of thousands of seals, I'd swear,
In the stretch of that field — " white harps " to spare

Dawn breaks, snow patches lie on the slopes:
far away, they seem like flocks of sheep
or maybe geese.
Remember — plodding through spring mud
to see the budding willows,
in camel-hair robe and sable hat
crossing the icy river.

DAvid, the king, was grieved and moved,
He went to his chamber, his chamber, and wept.
And as he went, he wept and said,
" O my son, O my son!
Would to God I had died, would to God I had died,
Would to God I had died for thee,
O Absalom, my son, my son. "