The Home Circle | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 13, 1880

The Home Circle.

BEGINNING AGAIN.

WHEN sometimes, our feet grow weary, On the rugged hills of life— The path stretched long and dreary With trial and labor rife— We pause on the toilsome journey, Glancing backward in valley and glen, And sigh with infinite longing To return and begin again.

For behind is the dew of the morning, In all its freshness and light, And before are doubts and shadows, And the chill and gloom of the night, We remember the sunny places We passed so carelessly then, And ask, with a passionate longing, To return and begin again.

Ah, vain, indeed, is the asking! Life's duties press all of us on, And who dare shrink from the labor, Or sigh for the sunshine that's gone? And, it may be, not far before us Wait fairer places than then; Life's paths may yet lead by still waters, Though we may not begin again.

Forevermore upward and onward Be our paths on the hills of life, And soon with a radiant dawning Transfigure the toil and the strife; And our Father's hand will lead us Tenderly upward then; In the joy and peace of a fairer world He'll let us begin again.