LOSE by the window I saw her,

Only a bright young girl,

With a tear on her drooping lashes,

Half hid by a straying curl.

June sunshine was tempting her sorely,

The children were playing near by,

And still she sat with her sewing,

And the tear-drop in her eye.

At last in anger she muttered,

"So cruel, so hateful, and mean!

I lose all the brightness and beauty,

As I sit here sewing a seam.

"My thread grows tangled and dirty,

My needle is sure to stick fast,

And the girls are passing the window:

Please tell me that work-time has past."

Ah, Daisy, dear child, in the future,

As the shadows of life come and go,

You will find some duties as irksome

As the seam you are trying to sew.

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Threads will knot, Daisy dear, and the needles

Will rust if you wet them with tears;

And seams will grow rough to your fingers,

When feeble and trembling with years.

Even brightness may pass like the sunshine,

Your life holding one little gleam;

But God is still watching my darling,

He knows we are sewing a seam.

Dear Grandma is wiser but cheerful,

She sits by the window to-day;

Where the sunlight is kissing her forehead,

And children are near her at play.

A smile in place of your tear-drop,

Grey locks where your golden are seen;

She says God's loved hath illumined

Her life, and made easy each seam.

She, too, can think of a summer day,

So sunny and bright in the past;

But her lips always say, "Father take me,

When play-time and work-time are past."