And out of slumber suddenly
  I seemed to wake, and know
The little feet, that followed me,
  Were ashes long ago! 
And in a burst of rapturous tears
  I clung to her and said: 
“Dear Pitty-pat!  The lonesome years
  They told me you were dead!

“O, when the mother drew, of old,
  About her loving knee
The little heads of dusk and gold,
  I know that we were three! 
And then there was an empty chair—­
  A stillness, strange and new: 
We could not find you anywhere—­
  And we were only two!”

She pointed where serenely bright
  The hills yet glowed afar: 
“Sweet sister, yon ineffable light
  Is but the gates ajar! 
And evermore, by night and day,
  We children still are three,
Tho’ I have gone a little way
  To open the gates,” said she.

Then all in colors faint and fine
  The morning round me shone,
The little hands slipt out of mine,
  And I was left alone;
But still I smelled the daffodils,
  I heard the running streams;
And that far glory on the hills—­
  Was it the light of dreams?

BEN HAFED’S MEED.

Ben Hafed, when the vernal rain
Warmed the chill heart of earth again,
Tilled the dull plot of sterile ground,
Within the dank and narrow round
That compassed his obscure domain;
With earnest zeal, thro’ heat and cold,
He wrought and turned the sluggish mold,
And all in furrows straight and fair
He sowed the yellow seed with care,
Trusting the harvest—­as of old.

Soft fell the rains, the suns shone bright,
The long days melted into night,
And beautiful, on either hand,
Outspread the shining summer land,
And all his neighbor’s fields were white. 
Long drawn, beneath the genial skies,
He saw deep-fruited vineyards rise;
On every hill the bladed corn
Flashed like the falchions of the morn
Before Ben Hafed’s wistful eyes.

But in the garden, dull and bare,
Where he had wrought with patient care,
No cluster purpled on the vine,
No blossom made the furrows shine
With hints of harvest anywhere! 
Ben Hafed, scorning to complain,
Bent to his thankless toil again: 
“I slight no task I find to do,
Dear Lord, and if my sheaves be few,
Thou wilt not count my labor vain?”

His neighbors, rich in flocks and lands,
Stood by and mocked his empty hands: 
“Why wage with ceaseless fret and toil
The grim warfare that yields no spoil? 
Why spend thy zest on barren sands? 
The circling seasons come and go,
And others garner as they sow;
But year by year, in sun and rain,
Thou till’st these fields with toil and pain,
Where only tares and thistles grow!”

With quiet mien Ben Hafed heard,
And answered not by sign or word,
Tho’ some divine, all-trustful sense
Of loss made sweet thro’ recompense,
In God’s good time, within him stirred. 
With no vain protest or lament,
Low to the stubborn glebe he bent: 
“I till the fields Thou gavest me,
And leave the harvest, Lord, to thee,”
He said—­and plodded on, content.