Great All in All, that art my rest, my home;
My way is tedious, and my steps are slow:
Reach forth Thy helpful hand, or bid me come;
I am Thy child, O teach Thy child to go;
Conjoin Thy sweet commands to my desire,
And I will venture, though I fall or tire.

My soul, thy love is dear; 'twas thought a good
And easy penn'worth of thy Saviour's blood;
But be not proud; all matters rightly scanned,
'Twas over-bought: 'twas sold at second hand.

I HAD a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of nature,
Might in some dim wise divine
The depth of his infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,
And as many changes took,
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling

O STRONG , upwelling prayers of faith,
From inmost founts of life ye start,—
The spirit's pulse, the vital breath
Of soul and heart!

From pastoral toil, from traffic's din,
Alone, in crowds, at home, abroad,
Unheard of man, ye enter in
The ear of God.

Ye brook no forced and measured tasks,
Nor weary rote, nor formal chains;
The simple heart, that freely asks
In love, obtains.

For man the living temple is:
The mercy-seat and cherubim,
And all the holy mysteries,
He bears with him.

And most avails the prayer of love,

As Gammer Gurton, with manye a wyde styche
Sat pesynge & patching of Hodg her mans briche
By chance or misfortune as shee her geare tost
In Hodge lether bryches her needle shee lost,
When Diccon the bedlem had hard by report
That good Gammer Gurton was robde in thyssorte,
He quyetly perswaded with her in that stound
Dame Chather deare gossyp this needle had found,
Yet knew shee no more of this matter (alas)
Then knoeth Tom our clarke whatthe Priest saith at masse
Here of there ensued so fearfull a fraye,
Mas Doctor was sent for these gossyps to staye,

I have derived all beauty from denial,
All grace from darkness, wonder from dismay;
And strength has come, with wisdom, from betrayal;
Vision from anguish, grandeur from decay.
The flesh holds empire only for a while;
A dream, however frustrate on its way,
Burns starward through a deathless mile-on-mile.
Only the feasts and satisfactions slay.

So from the white refusal of your lips,
The exile in the gesture of your hands,
Release has come for all my sunken ships
Straining to re-essay the final strands.
So from the unlit altars of your eyes

The woman was old and ragged and gray
And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.

The street was wet with a recent snow
And the woman's feet were aged and slow.

She stood at the crossing and waited long,
Alone, uncared for, amid the throng

Of human beings who passed her by
Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eye.

Down the street, with laughter and shout,
Glad in the freedom of "school let out,"

Came the boys like a flock of sheep,
Hailing the snow piled white and deep.

Past the woman so old and gray

More innocently born and calmer seems
In its soft summer haze
This Sunday morning than all other days.
No early footsteps walk into my dreams,
A peace is everywhere
As if the whole created world believed in prayer,
Over the solitary fields of wheat,
And down the village street,
And on my folded clothes across the chair.

I know my foolishness, a mere ant trying to shake a tree;
Such is the tyro's urge, ever to criticize.
With old age, leaving behind a thousand poems—
By whom will their strengths and weaknesses be judged?

Though ease and plenty, fruits of wealth,
And all the means of life and health,
And sweet convenience, please us;
In poverty, which most we dread,
Without a house above my head,
Or feathers to make soft my bed,
My soul could rest in Jesus.

When he came down from heav'n to earth,
The manger was his place of birth,
A chamber was denied him;
And when, to do his Father's will,
With loving kindness, pow'r, and skill,
He went about, quite lowly still,
The women's hands supplied him.

Thy then should I, who taste his grace,