to go back. There are many people in mid-life, bound now in the
chains of evil companionships, who would give all they have for the
sweet delights and pure pleasures of friendship which once might have
been theirs, which in youth reached out to them in vain white hands of
importunity and blessing. But it is too late; the door is shut.

So it is with the opportunities of doing good to others, comforting,
helping, cheering, lightening burdens, giving gladness and joy. We
stand continually before open doors which we do not enter. Ofttimes we
shrink with timid feeling from the sweet ministry, holding back the
sympathetic word or restraining ourselves from the doing of the gentle
kindness, thinking our proffer of love might be unwelcome. Or we do
not perceive the opportunity to give a blessing. This is true very
often, especially in the closer and more tender intimacies of life. We
do not recognize the heart-hunger in our loved ones, and we walk with
them day by day, failing to help them in the thousand ways in which we
might help them, until they are gone from us and the door is shut.
Then all we can do is to bear the pain of regret, having only the hope
that in some way in the life beyond, we may be able to pay--though so
late--love's debt.

"How will it be
When you at last in heaven we see--
Dear souls, whose footsteps in lost days
Made musical earth's toil-worn ways,
While we not half the loneliness
That bound you to our side could guess?
Where angels know your footfall we
Are fain to be.

"We never knew--
So heedlessly we walked with you--
The drops we jostled from your cup,
That spilt, could not be gathered up;
We might have given you foam and glow
From our own beaker's overflow;
Ah! what we might have been to you
We never knew.

"We might have lent
Such strength, such comfort and content
To you, out of our ample store;
We might have hastened on before
To lift the shadows from your way,
Darkened, ere noon, to twilight's gray;
With earth's chilled air love's warm heart-scent
We might have blent.

"Dear, wistful eyes,
Ye haunt us with your kind surprise,
Your tender wonder that a heart
Should thus be left alone, apart,
So loving, so misunderstood
By us, in our self-centred mood:
Alas! in vain to you arise
Our longing cries.

"Oh, will you wait
For us beyond the shining gate