Explore "Shadows" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I am sorry in the gladness / Of the joys that crown my days, / For the souls that sit in sadness / Or walk uninviting ways.
On the radiance of my labour / That a loving fate bestowed, / Falls the shadow of my neighbour, / Crushed beneath a thankless load.
As the canticle of pleasure / From my lovelit altar rolls, / There is one discordant measure, / As I think of homeless souls.
And I know that grim old story, / Preached from pulpits, is not so, / For no God could sit in glory / And see sinners writhe below.
In that great eternal Centre / Where all human life has birth, / Boundless love and pity enter / And flow downward to the earth.
And all souls in sin or sorrow / Are but passing through the night, / And I know on some to-morrow / God will love them into light.