Now is the time for folding the hands—time to rest—and rest is sweet 
when rest is needed. Now is the time to watch the day dim and the 
night darken, until, at the end, you, who began your dreamings in the 
day, find you end them in the night. 
For years | have planned to spend this too-brief gloaming alone, 
not thinking, but letting thoughts drift over me like summer clouds, 
which drop their passing shadows on the field and stream. This is 
m hour to banish care; to leave the hush of prayer on the spirit and 
let God walk silent in the heart, as in a garden. 
‘‘To wander lonely as a cloud," 
as Wordsworth phrases it. If I may, in the open, with the neighborly 
sky and the companionable stars, and hear the moan of winter winds 
through naked trees, or feel the touch of summer’s lips; or, if I may 
not be Out-of-Doors, to be Out-of-Doors in spirit and watch, as I sit 
in my study before the lights are lit, the droop of ashen hues into the 
sky, and the shadow these ashen tints cast across our spirit. 
Hloating, floating, from dawn to dusk, 
Till the pearly twilight dies, 
And the mists float up from the sapphire sea 
And cloud all the sapphire skies. 
Floating, floating, while golden stars 
Seem to float in a sea overhead, 
And starry lights from a sea below 
Glow orange, and purple, and red; 
Till we seem floating out from the sea of life, 
The tempests of passion, the stormwinds of strife. 
Out into a strange, mysterious space, 
Till God shall find us a landing-place. 
Drifting, drifting, to lands unknown, 
From a world of love and care, 
Drifting away to a home untried 
And a heart that is waiting there. 
O ship! sail swiftly—O waters deep. 
Bear me safe to that haven unknowr—- 
Safe to that tender love that waits 
To be forever my own; 
Till we drift away jrom the sea of life, 
The tempests of passion, the stormwinds of strife, 
Out to a haven, out to a shore 
Where life is love for evermore. 
-GOOD WORDS. 
230 
