The strength we need
For every
Sacrificial deed!



The Change


'Twas hard to think that he must go,
We knew that we should miss him so,
We thought that he must always stay
Beside us, laughing, day by day;
That he must never know the care
And hurt and grief of life out there.
Then came the call for youth, and he
Talked with his mother and with me,
And suddenly we learned the boy
Was hungering to know the joy
Of doing something real with life,
And that he craved the test of strife.

And so we steeled ourselves to dread;
To see at night his empty bed;
To feel the silence and the gloom
That hovers o'er his vacant room,
And though we wept the day he went,
And many a lonely hour we've spent,
We've come to think as he, somehow,
And we are more contented now;