"Good wife, what are you singing for? You know we've lost the hay,
And what we'll do for horse and kine is more than I can say;
While like as not, with storm and rain, we'll lose both corn and wheat.'‘
She looked up with a pleasant smile, and answered low and sweet,
"There is a heart, there is a hand, we feel but can not see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

He turned around with sullen gloom. She said, "Love, be at rest;
You've cut the grass, worked soon and late, you did your very best.
That was your work; you've not at all to do with wind and rain,
And do not doubt but that you will reap rich fields of golden grain;
For there's a heart, and there's a hand, we feel ;but can not see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

"That's like a woman's reasoning, — we must, because we must."
She softly said: "I reason not; I only work and trust.
The harvest may redeem the day; keep heart, whate'er betide:
When one door shuts, I've always seen another open wide.
There is a heart, there is a hand, we feel but can not see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

He kissed the calm and trustful face; gone was his restless pain.
She heard him with a cheerful step go whistling down the lane,
And went about her household tasks full of a glad content,
Singing to time her busy hands, as to and fro she went:
"There is a heart, there is a hand, we feel but can not see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

Days came and went: ‘twas Christmastime, and the great fire burned clear.
The farmer said: " Dear wife, it's been a good and happy year;
The fruit was gain, the surplus corn has bought the hay, you know."
She lifted then a smiling face, and said: "I told you so;
For there's a heart, and there's a hand, we feel but can not see;
We've always been provided for, and we shall always be."

Selected

Found in the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, 12-26-1912

[This message has been edited by Linda Sutton (edited December 15, 2000).]