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 met
To mount the heights of toil
With childish feet.
When Summer walked the land
In Passion’s red arrayed,
Under green sweeping boughs
My couch I made.
The noontide 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.
My hands were soft with ease,
Long were the Autumn hours;
I left the ripened sheaves
For poppy-flowers.
But lo! now Winter glooms,
And gray is in my hair;
Whither has flown the world
I found so fair?
My patient God, forgive!
Pray Thy pardon sweet,
I lay a lonely heart
Before Thy feet.
The poet is a woman who died young, at the age of thirty-five, yet the humble world weary tone of the poem reflects the mind of one wizened with aged. I find the third stanza interesting. Youth being a time of joy, yet none is met. I think of my young adulthood, a time I envisioned to be of grand adventure and thrill seeking–experience and elation, yet in truth it was a horrid struggle, severe confusion and aimless wandering.
