EVENING BRINGS US HOME (continued) From our toilings and our moilings, from the quest of daily bread, From the worship of our idols, and the burying of our dead, Like children, worn and weary With the way so long and dreary, Evening brings us home at last, From our journeyings oft and many over strange and stormy seas, From our search the wide world over for the larger liberties, From our labours vast and various, With our harvestings precarious, Evening brings us home at last, From the yet-untrodden No-Lands, where we sought Thy secrets out, From the blizzards of the Nightlands, and the blazing White-Lands' drought, From the undiscovered country Where our IS is yet to be, Evening brings us home at last, EVENING BRINGS US HOME (continued) From the temples of our living, all empurpled with Thy giving, From the warp of life thick-threaded with the gold of Thine inweaving, From the days so full of splendour, From the visions rare and tender, Evening brings us home at last, From the Dim-Lands, from the Grim-Lands, from the Lands of High Emprise, From the Lands of Disillusion to the Truth that never dies; With rejoicing and with singing, Each his rightful sheaves home-bringing,- To Harvest-Home with Thee. From the fields of fiery trying, where our bravest and our best, By their living and their dying their souls' high faith attest, From these dread, red fields of sorrow, Evening brings each one at last, THE REAPER All through the blood-red Autumn, The Reaper reaped without ceasing. All through the roaring Winter, When the skies were black with wrath, And the seas were white with froth,— All through the quick of the Spring-time, When the trees and the flowers were bur- And men went wearily, The Reaper reaped without ceasing. All through the blazing Summer, When the year was at its best, When Earth, subserving God alone, The Reaper reaped without ceasing. THE REAPER (continued) So, through the Seasons' roundings, How long, O Lord, shall the Reaper Stretch out Thy Hand and stay him, And the Gleaner find nought for His Thy Might alone can end it,— This fratricidal strife. Our souls are sick with the tale of death, That the Gleaner be glad in His glean NO MAN GOETH ALONE Where one is, There am I,— No man goeth alone! Though he fly to earth's remotest bound, Though his soul in the depths of sin be drowned,— No man goeth alone! Though he take him the wings of fear, and flee Past the outermost realms of light; Though he weave him a garment of mystery, And hide in the womb of night,— No man goeth alone! Though apart in the city's heart he dwell, Though he wander beyond the stars, Though he bury himself in his nethermost hell, And vanish behind the bars, No man goeth alone! |