The Home Circle by Alice Cary

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 50.

The Home Circle.

By Alice Cary

HOW AND WHERE.

How are we living? Like herbs in the garden that stand in a row, And have nothing to do but to stand there and grow? Our powers of perceiving So dull and so dead, They simply extend to the objects about us,— The moth, having all his dark pleasure without us,— The worm in his bed!

If thus we are living, And fading, and falling, and rotting, alas!— Like the grass, or the flowers that grow in the grass,— Is life worth our having? The insect a-humming,— The wild bird is better, that sings as it flies,— The ox, that turns up his great face to the skies When the thunder is coming.

Where are we living? In passion, and pain, and remorse do we dwell,— Creating, yet terribly hating, our hell? No triumph achieving? No grossness refining? The wild tree does more; for his coat of rough barks He trims with green mosses, and checks with the marks Of the long summer shining.

We're dying, not living: Our senses shut up, and our hearts faint and cold; Upholding old things just because they are old; Our good spirits grieving, We suffer our springs Of promise to pass without sowing the land, And hungry and sad in the harvest-time stand, Expecting good things!

—Alice Cary.