“Who’s seen my day?
Tis gone away,
Nor left a trace
In any place.
If I could only find
It’s foot-fall in some mind,
Some spirit-waters stirred
By wand of deed or word,
I should not stand at shadowy eve
And for my day so grieve and grieve.”
There is always a sacredness about last things. We remember the last things in the life of a loved friend who is gone, – the last walk we had together, the last talk, the last letter our friend wrote to us, the last book he was reading, with the mark at the place where they left off, the last piece of work the gentle hands did, the last words the dear lips spoke.
We are ever coming to last things, things we shall never meet again. Now it is the last hour of our day, the day, which came to us new and clean in the morning, which we have spent well or ill, and which, however, we have spent it, we cannot live over again. Now it is the last hour of a year, which came to us with its thousand tasks and hopes and opportunities. Now it is the last hour of a life. The doctor says you can live but a little while, and if there are any matters you ought to attend to, you would better not put them off any longer.
But it is not death only that ends things. Each period of life has its closing which is as final and irrevocable in its place, as death in its place. Childhood has its last hour. Childhood is the great sowing-time of life. Seed should then be sown in the tender soil, seeds that will grow into beautiful things in the after years. This is the parents’ opportunity. While it lasts love should be alert to pour into the young mind and heart the germs of all true and beautiful things. It is also the child’s opportunity. A wasted childhood is apt to mean a marred, if not a maimed, manhood or womanhood. There are things that can be gotten into the life only in childhood; not to get these lessons, or qualities, or impulses, or tendencies, into mind and heart in the bright, sunny days, is to go through all the after years without them. Childhood has its last hour; then the veil drops and we are done forever with that period of life. It never will come again to us.
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