A picture memory brings to me <br />I look across the years and see <br />Myself beside my mother's knee. <br /> <br />I feel her gentle hand restrain <br />My selfish moods, and know again <br />A child's blind sense of wrong and pain. <br /> <br />But wiser now, a man gray grown, <br />My childhood's needs are better known, <br />My mother's chastening love I own. <br /> <br />Gray grown, but in our Father's sight <br />A child still groping for the light <br />To read His works and ways aright. <br /> <br />I wait, in His good time to see <br />That as my mother dealt with me <br />So with His children dealeth He. <br /> <br />I bow myself beneath His hand <br />That pain itself was wisely planned <br />I feel, and partly understand. <br /> <br />The joy that comes in sorrow's guise, <br />The sweet pains of self-sacrifice, <br />I would not have them otherwise. <br /> <br />And what were life and death if sin <br />Knew not the dread rebuke within, <br />The pang of merciful discipline? <br /> <br />Not with thy proud despair of old, <br />Crowned stoic of Rome's noblest mould! <br />Pleasure and pain alike I hold. <br /> <br />I suffer with no vain pretence <br />Of triumph over flesh and sense, <br />Yet trust the grievous providence, <br /> <br />How dark soe'er it seems, may tend, <br />By ways I cannot comprehend, <br />To some unguessed benignant end; <br /> <br />That every loss and lapse may gain <br />The clear-aired heights by steps of pain, <br />And never cross is borne in vain.<br /><br />John Greenleaf Whittier<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-trust-3/
