p. 13 | We Reap What We Sow by Allen Francis Gage

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Sep 26, 1912

We Reap What We Sow

By Allen Francis Gage

ALLEN FRANCIS GAGE

WE may mold our lives at will From childhood's early day, Our destiny for good or ill; The while our hearts with rapture thrill With the music of life's lay.

The hopes of early youth With eager hands we clasp; Sometimes the error with the truth We take to our hearts with little ruth Of the evil within our grasp.

But in maturer thought, And in midday's clearer light, We value less the heritage bought; We count the chaff as a thing of naught, Most worthless in our sight.

We seek to undo the wrong, To purge from the gold the dross, To remove the discord from the song, Which will mar the music the whole life long, And of the gain make loss.

And if the roots are deep, As habits of lifetime grow, We may pray to God as we mourn and weep, That nature's lesson we learn to keep,— We reap what we may sow.

In youth's glad morning light Then sow but seeds of grain, That the harvest reaped in life's coming night May be but the fruit of seeds of right, And the sowing be not in vain.

For the reaping will surely come, In God's own time and way, When he gathers his saints to the har- vest home, And metes to the wicked their final doom, At the last great judgment day.

Chicago, Ill.