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MEA CULPA
By Ethna Carbery
Be pitiful, my God!
No hard-won gifts I bring—
But empty, pleading hands
To Thee at evening.
Spring came, white-browed and young,
I, too, was young with Spring.
There was a blue, blue heaven
Above a skylark's wing.
Youth is the time for joy,
I cried, it is not meet
To mount the heights of toil
With child-soft feet.
When Summer walked the land
In Passion's red arrayed,
Under green sweeping boughs
My couch I made.
The noon-tide heat was sore,
I slept the Summer through;
An angel waked me—"Thou
Hast work to do."
I rose and saw the sheaves
Upstanding in a row;
The reapers sang Thy praise
While passing to and fro.
