VAIN REGRETS by G. E. Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 24, 1900

VAIN REGRETS.

By G. E. Price

Ah, those memories of yore, how they dog all our footsteps, And over the present their baleful chill cast! We see their dread shadows and long to escape them, And crave a nepenthe to banish the past. The days of our childhood, 'Mid sweet country wildwood, Are crowded with scenes that time's storms have endeared, Yet each has some token Of sacred truth broken, Some tender green virtue-bud blighted and seared.

"O, go to your graves!" I shriek out in my anguish; Can pardon not banish your forms from my sight? Can the hope of o'ercoming not banish your moaning, Nor scatter your darkness the presence of light?" But yesterday's choices Still utter their voices, And crowd on to-day with the brood time has bred. They watch and pursue us, And shoot their darts through us, Till our bright nascent future is still-born with dread.

Our lost opportunities, sweet possibilities, Rise up before us like ghosts of the slain. The pain we have caused may long since have vanished, The wounds may have healed, but the scars still remain. And, O, for forgetfulness, Death with its restfulness, Ne'er to remember the chances we've lost Of doing some kindness, Of guiding some blindness, Of lighting to safety some bark tempest-tossed!

But let not our hopelessness crush out our usefulness; Ne'er can discouragement help us in life. Our path must be upward, our gaze on the summit Looming grandly above all the world and its strife. The past when forsaken, The future o'ertaken, Our faces must still keep Perfection in sight; Its virtues unfolding, Will change us beholding, And we thus be fitted for heaven and its light. Marysville, N. B. G. E. PRICE.