Oh, God, have You deadened Your ear? The chimes in old Trinity steeple Ring in the sweet season of prayer, And still God is grinding His people, He is grinding them down to despair. Ring in the sweet season of prayer, He is grinding them down to despair. Mind, body and muscle and marrow, He grinds them again and again. Can He who takes heed of the sparrow Be blind to the tortures of men? He grinds them again and again. Be blind to the tortures of men? V. In a bare little room of a tenement row Of the city, Maurice sat alone. It was so (In this nearness to life's darkest phases of grief And despair) that his own bitter woe found relief. Joy needs no companion; but sorrow and pain Long to comrade with sorrow. The flowery chain Flung by Pleasure about her gay votaries breaks With the least strain upon it. The chain sorrow makes Links heart unto heart. As a bullock will fly To far fields when an arrow has pierced him, to die, So Maurice had flown over far oceans to find No balm for his wounds, and no peace for his mind. Cosmopolitan, always, is sorrow; at home In all countries and lands, thriving well while we roam In vain efforts to slay it. Toil only, brings peace To the tempest tossed heart. What in travel Maurice Failed to find—self-forgetfulness—came with his work For the suffering poor in the slums of New York. He had wandered in strange heathen countries—had been Among barbarous hordes; but the greed and the sin Of his own native land seemed the shame of the hour. In his gold there was balm, in his pen there was power To comfort the needy, to aid and defend The unfortunate. Close in their midst, as a friend And companion, for more than twelve months he had dwelt. Like a ray of pure light in a cellar was felt This strong, wholesome presence. His little room bare Of all luxuries, taught the poor souls who flocked there For his counsel and aid, how by mere cleanliness The grim features of want lose some lines of distress. The slips from the plants on his window ledge, given To beauty starved souls, spoke more clearly of heaven And God than did sermons or dry creedy tracts. Maurice was no preacher; and yet his kind acts Of mercy and self-immolation sufficed To wake in dark minds a bright image of
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