p. 14 | BEAUTIFUL HANDS by Frances Eugenia Bolton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Aug 23, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 34.

BEAUTIFUL HANDS.

By Frances Eugenia Bolton

BY FRANCES EUGENIA BOLTON.

They were beautiful hands, the artist said. They were shapely and soft and white, Dimpled and taper, and tipped with red, And they glittered with jewels bright. The artist modeled, the lover pressed, "They were made," he said, "to be soft caressed," They were beautiful hands.

They were beautiful hands, the angels said. They lay in a casket plain, Wrinkled and aged and calloused and dead, They had labored in sorrow and pain, Lifted burdens, nourished and blest, And they lay ungarnished in silent rest, They were beautiful hands.

Suddenly up at the throne, it seemed These hands were side by side,— The white and dainty, all jewel-gleamed, The old, and unglorified. At the gaze of the angel the jewels were paste, And the beautiful hands turned to hideous waste, No more beautiful hands.

But O, how the plain old hands grew fair! White, more shapely, fresh and fine, And they rippled the strings of a harp, and rare Was the music they made divine, And it seemed that an angel sang sweet above, Beautiful hands do the deeds of love, They are beautiful hands.