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Rosemary and Pansies

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<h2>THE ROAD TO CHURCH</h2> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Rutted by wheels and scarred by hoofs And by rude footsteps trod, The old road winds through glimmering woods Unto the house of God. </div> <div class="stanza"> How many feet, assembling here From each diverse abode, Led by how many different aims, Have walked this shadowy road! </div> <div class="stanza"> How many sounds of woe and mirth Have thrilled these green woods dim— The funeral’s slow and solemn tramp, The wedding’s joyous hymn. </div> <div class="stanza"> Full oft, amid the gloom and glow Through which the highway bends, I watch the meeting streams of life, Whose mingled current tends </div> <div class="stanza"> Toward where, beyond the rock-strewn hill, Against the dusky pines That rise above the churchyard graves, The white spire soars and shines.{36} </div> <div class="stanza"> Here pass bowed men, with blanching locks, World-weary, faint, and old, Mourning the ways of reckless youths Far-wandering from the fold. </div> <div class="stanza"> There totter women, frail and meek, Of dim but gentle eyes, Whom heaven’s love has made most kind, Earth’s hardships made most wise. </div> <div class="stanza"> Apart, two lovers walk together, With words and glances fond, So happy now they scarce can feel The need of bliss beyond. </div> <div class="stanza"> Gaunt-limbed, his shoulders stooped with toil, His forehead seamed with care, Adown the road the farm hand stalks With awed and awkward air. </div> <div class="stanza"> The sermon glimmers in his mind, Its truths half understood, And yet from prayer and hymn he gains A shadowy dream of good </div> <div class="stanza"> That sanctifies the offering His bare life daily makes— His tender love for wife and child, And toil borne for their sakes.{37} </div> <div class="stanza"> Thus through the bleakness and the bloom, O’er snows and freshening grass, Devout, profane, grief-worn or gay, The thronged church-goers pass, </div> <div class="stanza"> Till, one by one, they each and all, Their earthly journeyings o’er, Move silent down that well-known road Which they shall walk no more. {38}</div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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