p. 380 | The Home Circle by Nora Perry

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jun 18, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 24.

The Home Circle.

By Nora Perry

TOO LATE.

WHAT silence we keep year after year, With those who are most near to us and dear; We live beside each other day by day, And speak of myriad things, but seldom say The full, sweet word that lies just in our reach, Beneath the commonplace of common speech.

Then out of sight and out of reach they go— Those close familiar friends, who loved us so; And, sitting in the shadow they have left, Alone with loneliness, and sore bereft, We think with vain regret of some fond word That once we might have said and they have heard.

For weak and poor the love that we expressed Now seems beside the vast, sweet unexpressed, And slight the deeds we did, to those undone, And small the service spent, to treasure won, And undeserved the praise, for word and deed That should have overflowed the simple need.

This is the cruel cross of life, to be Full visioned only when the ministry Of death has been fulfilled and in the place Of some dear presence is but empty space. What recollected services can then Give consolation for the might have been?

—Nora Perry, in Independent.