Page:Dreams and Images.djvu/43

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.