I .

What year of all Thy years, O Father mine,
Is not more wonderful than words can say?
The starry night, the splendor of the day —
Are not, all years, these benefactions thine?
Doth not each spring reveal a life divine,
Each summer nourish with unstinted ray,
Each autumn make the leafy woodlands gay,
And load with clusters every clinging vine?
Doth not each winter make the silent stars
Into more awful spaces seem withdrawn,
And deck with softer radiance the cars
That speed the sunset and bring back the dawn,
And over hill and valley slow unfold
A vesture rarer than were cloth of gold?

II .

And yet, O God! the half has not been told.
I have not named the rapture of delight
When new-born spirits break upon our sight;
When love, at first so timid, groweth bold,
And all the highest heavens seem unrolled,
That we may read in characters of light
Of days to which succeeds no dark'ning night;
But the night cometh drearily and cold.
Yet is death wonderful as well as life,
And wonderful the hope of life in store,
And wonderful all labor and all strife
For better things than e'er have been before.
Yea, God, the wonder of thy humblest years
Fills all my soul with laughter and with tears.