The Home Circle by Alice Cary

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jul 24, 1879

The Home Circle.

By Alice Cary

SPENT AND MISSPENT.

Stay yet a little longer in the sky, O golden color of the evening sun! Let not the sweet day in its sweetness die, While my day's work is only just begun.

Counting the happy chances strown about Thick as the leaves, and saying which was best, The rosy lights of morning all went out, And it was burning noon, and time to rest.

Then leaning low upon a piece of shade, Fringed round with violets and pansies sweet, My heart and I, I said, will be delayed, And plan our work while cools the sultry heat.

But when the idle pleasure ceased to please, And I awoke, and not a plan was planned, Just as a drowning man, at what he sees, Catches for life, I caught the thing at hand,

And so life's little work-day has been all Spent, and misspent in doing what I could, And in regrets and efforts to recall The chance of having, being, what I would.

And so sometimes I cannot choose but cry, Seeing my late-sown flowers are hardly set— O darkening color of the evening sky, Spare me the day a little longer yet! —Alice Cary.