LIFE'S HEAVIEST LOSS by Miss Frances Brown

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 31, 1882

LIFE'S HEAVIEST LOSS.

By Miss Frances Brown

UPON the white sea-sand There sat a pilgrim band, Telling the losses that their life had known; While evening waned away From breezy cliff and bay, And the strong tides went out with weary moan.

One spake with quivering lip Of a fair-freighted ship, With all his household to the deep gone down; But one had wilder woe— For a fair face, long ago, Lost in the darker depths of a great town.

There were those who mourned their youth With a most loving ruth, For its brave hopes and memories ever green; And one upon the West Turned an eye that would not rest, For far-off hills whereon its joy had been.

Some talked of vanished gold; Some of proud honors told; Some spake of friends who were their trust no more; And one of a green grave Beside a foreign wave, That made him sit so lonely on the shore.

But when their tales were done, There spake among them one, stranger, seeming from all sorrow free: “Sad losses ye have met, But mine is heavier yet, For a believing heart is gone from me.”

“Alas,” these pilgrims said, “For the living and the dead, For fortune's cruelty, for love's sure cross, For the wrecks of land and sea!— But, however it came to thee, Thine, stranger, is life's last and heaviest loss.”

From Lyrics, by Miss Frances Brown.