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A Word for the Future
- WHEN we sow the good seed of the present,
- That the future will garner and gain,
- For whom do we till, weed, and water,
- For whom watch the sun and the rain,
- With passionate faith that our waiting
- And labour will not be in vain?
- Not the men and the women about us—
- Themselves but themselves can make free;
- Not they, more than we, the full harvest
- Of the seed we are sowing will see;
- But the fruits will be reaped by the children—
- The men and the women to be.
- O, the children!—the rose‐leaf soft faces,
- The sweet little voices, and mild,
- The arms that have clung and caressed us,
- The lips that have babbled and smiled,—
- Have these blinded us so we discern not
- That a child is not only a child?
- Not only a toy and a treasure
- For mother’s and father’s delight,
- Not only a flower want may wither,
- Or lovelessness ruin and blight,
- But a soul to be saved, in Truth’s sunshine,
- Or lost where Truth’s absence makes night.
- And the souls that shall shape the world’s future
- Are the souls we are shaping to‐day!
- Let the children have share in our justice,
- Not just in our pity and play.
- They will do the world’s work, and our work is
- To show them the work and the way.
- And he who is helping the children,
- Who are frail as the buds of a rose,
- Who is keeping the canker from blighting
- The blossoms before they unclose,
- And making the future sons hardy
- To face all the future’s fell foes,—
- He is doing the world’s work eternal
- That the first dawn of soul saw begun;
- He is hastening the hour when the children
- The battles we lost will have won:
- When the deeds that we did not, and could not,
- Those small hands—grown strong—will have done.
