p. 502 | The Home Circle

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 10, 1881

The Home Circle.

AUTUMN.

AUTUMN once more begins to teach; Sere leaves their annual sermon preach; And with the southward-slipping sun Another stage of life is done. The day is of a paler hue, The night is of a darker blue, Just as it was a year ago; For time runs fast, but grace is slow.

Life glides away in many a bend, In chapters which begin and end: Each has its trial, each its grace, Each in life's whole its proper place. Life has its joinings and its breaks, But each transition quickly takes Us nearer to, or further from The threshold of our heavenly home.

Years pass away; new crosses come; Past sorrow is a sort of home, An exile's home, and only lent For needful rest in banishment; It narrows life, and walls it in, And shuts the door on many a sin; 'Tis almost like a calm fireside, Where humble hearts are fain to bide.

Thou comest, Autumn, to unlade Thy wealthy freight of summer shade, Still sorrowful as in past years, Yet mild and sunny in thy tears, Ripening and hardening all thy growth Of solid wood, yet nothing loth To waste upon the frolic breeze Thy leaves, like flights of golden bees.

Have I laid by from summer hours Ripe fruits as well as leaves and flowers? Hath my past year a growth to harden, As well as fewer sins to pardon? Is God in all things more and more A king within me than before? I know not, yet one change hath come— The world feels less and less a home.

My soul appears, as I get old, More prompt in act, in prayer less cold: Crosses, from use, more lightly press; Mirth is more purely weariness; With less to quarrel with in life, I grow less patient with its strife; I wish more simply, Lord, to be, Ailing or well, always with Thee.

—Selected.