The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 4.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[118] For the warmest of hearts is frozen,
     The freest of hands is still;
And the gap in our picked and chosen
     The long years may not fill.

No duty could overtask him,
     No need his will outrun;
Or ever our lips could ask him,
     His hands the work had done.

He forgot his own soul for others,
     Himself to his neighbor lending;
He found the Lord in his suffering brothers,
     And not in the clouds descending.

So the bed was sweet to die on,
     Whence he saw the doors wide swung
Against whose bolted iron
     The strength of his life was flung.

And he saw ere his eye was darkened
     The sheaves of the harvest-bringing,
And knew while his ear yet hearkened
     The voice of the reapers singing.

Ah, well! The world is discreet;
     There are plenty to pause and wait;
But here was a man who set his feet
     Sometimes in advance of fate;

Plucked off the old bark when the inner
     Was slow to renew it,
And put to the Lord's work the sinner
     “When saints failed to do it.