Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/167



OR months and years, with penury and want
 * And heart-sore envy did they dare to cope;

And mite by mite was saved from earnings scant,
 * To buy, some future day, the God-sent hope.

They trod the crowded streets of hoary towns,
 * Or tilled from year to year the wearied fields,

And in the shadow of the golden crowns
 * They gasped for sunshine and the health it yields.

They turned from homes all cheerless, child and man.
 * With kindly feelings only for the soil,

And for the kindred faces, pinched and wan,
 * That prayed, and stayed, unwilling, at their toil.

They lifted up their faces to the Lord,
 * And read His answer in the westering sun

That called them ever as a shining word,
 * And beckoned seaward as the rivers run.