Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/26

14

HE day and night are symbols of creation,
 * And each has part in all that God has made;

There is no ill without its compensation,
 * And life and death are only light and shade.

There never beat a heart so base and sordid
 * But felt at times a sympathetic glow;

There never lived a virtue unrewarded,
 * Nor died a vice without its meed of woe.

In this brief life despair should never reach us;
 * The sea looks wide because the shores are dim;

The star that led the Magi still can teach us
 * The way to go if we but look to Him.

And as we wade, the darkness closing o'er us,
 * The hungry waters surging to the chin,

Our deeds will rise like stepping-stones before us—
 * The good and bad—for we may use the sin.