WHEN some poor heart that lives a-chill and dull,
Frozen long since by hardness and neglect,
Is stirred by gracious pity, dropped upon it
By one whose careless tenderness, half feigned,
Would be aroused by some ill-treated beast,
Or who would sweetly lift a drowning fly
From out his peril, set him in the sun,
And watch him till he flew, - it throbs and burns
And dreams and hopes, till, all in vain, it sees
Its fancied sunrise but a Northern Light
That coldly waves its wondrous lamp aloft
And then departs, leaving more bleak and cold
The still, far-reaching waste.
And so the trees
That bud again for one soft week in fall
Or winter, when the mocking skies grow mild,
Find their hope naught, and must endure again
The snows and winds and frosts that buffet them.
But not so sad their hap, for well they know
That soon the whirling snows will cease, and soon
The eager spring will smile, and all things bloom.
W. T.
Read more in News
Co-operative Society Bulletin.
