Explore "The Old Sampler" by Ruth Collie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dear little girl of Long Ago, so sweetly docile, quiet and prim, / making, laboriously and slow, your silken prayer to Him -- did your / child-heart beat eager wings beneath the bones of your stiff dress, / like some caged bird that sweetly sings, longing for freedom's / happiness? It must have been a day in June when with a gleaming, / scarlet thread, you worked the livelong afternoon, "Give us this day / our daily bread. " For look! Just where a line begins your needle / strayed a square too high; quite crooked are the words "our sins. " / Oh! were you gazing at the sky? Or did the daisies on your lawn / begin to wink and blink at you? Perhaps you spied a leprechaun just / where your mother's roses grew? I think God smiled at that mistake, / dear little girl so fair and prim, and blessed those hands that / failed to make -- a perfect gift for Him.