IT MAY NOT BE by John G. Whittier

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 17, 1882

IT MAY NOT BE.

By John G. Whittier

It may not be our lot to wield The sickle in the ripened field. Not ours to hear, on summer eves, The reaper's song among the sheaves.

Yet where our duty's task is wrought In unison with God's great thought, The near and future blend in one, And whatso'er is willed is done.

And ours the grateful service whence Comes, day by day, the recompense: The hope, the trust, the purpose stayed, The fountain, and the noonday shade.

And were this life the utmost span, The only end and aim of man, Better the toil of fields like these Than waking dreams and slothful ease.

But life, though falling like our grain, Like that, revives and springs again: And early called, how blest are they Who wait in heaven their harvest day! —John G. Whittier.