Poems (Helen Jenkins)/God's Ways are Best
GOD'S WAYS ARE BEST.
"God stay thee in thine agony, my boy, I cannot see thee die."—N. P. Willis.
"Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, He lives whom we call dead."—H. W. Longfellow.
Life's brittle threads, long worn, were slowly breaking:So soon must come the sleep which knows no waking,To him, our boy, for whom the angel waitedAs for a traveler on the way belated.Delirious dreams and fancies hovered o'er him,While Memory spread her vivid scenes before him.He joined the whirl of busy life once more,Calling to Charlie! Charlie! o'er and o'er;Thinking his friends around him here and there;Seeming, with them, the old-time tasks to share.So worn and tired! and yet, he never slumbered,While all the night the weary hours we numbered.Trembling, I crouched outside the open door,With chilling fear and dread, as ne'er before,O'erwhelmed. I could not see him die!The very thought was untold agony.With many a wild, beseeching prayer That God my darling cruel pain would spare,Alone I battled with my shuddering heart,Until the long night's blackness did depart.Then, with the light, came strength again to me;Over my weaker self a victory.
And still he talked! a word, a sentence broken:"Father!" and "Mother!" often fondly spoken,As if those names were graven on his heartToo deep to be erased—of it a part.O Death! if kind thy mission here below,How canst thou tear our quivering heart-strings so?Thou givest to the weary rest and peace;To frail humanity a sweet releaseFrom pain; and yet, we cower and shrink from thee—So grim, so dread, this awful mystery!At last sleep came. God only knew how blest,How glad were we, when he could sleep and rest;Although we knew so soon the end must come,And he awaken in his heavenly home.Ere this, one morn, with vision clear and bright,He greeted us with new and strange delight.Conscious that he was near "the vast untried,"With trustful love his face seemed glorified.He clung to us with many a fond embrace,And loving words to make our sorrow less."O, you are all so dear to me!" he said, "Yet do not weep or mourn when I am dead.I will be with you still,—a help a guide.[ fear not death, for God is by my side."
And he is gone! our boy, our well-beloved!Forever from our sight, while here, removed.God bless the friends who cheered his heart each day,While death's chill shadows gathered round his way;And o'er the gloom of those sad, funeral hoursBespread the brightness of earth's fairest flowers.Surely, I know it was a priceless boonTo train for Heaven this bright and shining one!How many hours I watched with pride and joyThat harm came not to him, my baby boy;And, in his childhood, that no taint of sinHis guileless heart should ever enter in;That coarse vulgarity, or words profane,The lips I kissed so often might not stain.Hatred and scorn for all things low and vileI sought to stamp upon his mind, the while;And when he grew from boyhood up to youth,He was the soul of manliness and truth.
There came a time when I must let him goOut in the world, his manhood's work to do.This was my heartfelt prayer: "O God, to theeI give my boy! O keep him pure for me!" To die, "wearing the white flower of a blameless life,"Were better far than years of moil and strife.What might have been? The grief, the bitter woe,The ills thus spared him, here I cannot know.God's ways are best. I know His love is grand.Vernon is happier in that brighter land.No pain or harm can ever come to him;No shadows ever his glad spirit dim.His feet, which once the earth so bravely trod,Now proudly climb the eternal hills of God.