So many tender words and true
We meant to say, dear love, to you;
So many things we meant to do.
But we forgot.
The busy days were full of care;
The long night fell and unaware
You passed beyond love’s leading prayer
While we forgot.
Now evermore through heart and brain
There breathes an undertone of pain;
Though what has been should be again,
We would forget.
Many of the sins of most good people are sins of not doing. We need always to put into our prayer of penitence the confession, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.”
This is true of our sins of speech. In one of the Psalms is a resolve that we all need to make – “I will take heed to my ways that I sin not with my tongue.” Some of us have a great deal of trouble with our tongues. We say many a harsh words, perhaps bitter words which cut and sting. We may plead, as our defense of what we tell, that the things we say of others are true. But we have no right to blurt out words that give pain to another, merely because they may chance to be true.
The ill timed truth we should have kept–
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
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