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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
POOLS IN THK SAND 
 
 BY MARGARET MAY, jjK^^ ■ 
 
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 Boston, U. S. A. 
 L. Prang & Company. 
 
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 Copyright, 1893. 
 
 By L. Prang & Co. 
 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
jy December, iSgo, Phillips Brooks {Ihen Dr. Brooks) ileliveteJ a 
 sermon, in which he used an illustration of the pools in the saiul. 
 The li'hole spi?it of the discourse -was one of hroad Christian unity. In 
 his earnest, thrilling manner he exclaimed, " Oh, my people, if I have told you 
 once, I have told you an hundred times that all divisions of sect or creed are 
 like the pools upon the ocean's shore. When the sea of God's love sweeps over 
 them, they will all disappear.'' 
 
 Having clothed the preacher's thought -with my own, in the following verse, 
 a mutual friend sent it to Dr. Brooks. He expressed himself as greath pleased 
 
7L<ith If, and gave me fi/// per??iission to use it in any luay I desired. It has 
 lyee7i published in " The New York Observer " and " The Boston Evening 
 Transcript,'' and is now placed in a more perinanent form, with the hope 
 that it may fulfil the desire of the preacher and the writer. 
 
 MARGARET MAY. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 in 2011 witii funding from 
 Tine Library of Congress 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/poolsinsandOOtuck 
 
->«^.-*" 
 
 
POOLS IN THE SAND. 
 
 1 stood beside the sea one day, 
 
 The tide was lov/ ; 
 
 With quiet flow 
 It softly lapped the ocean's rim, 
 Whose waving line, now clear, now dim, 
 
Revealed the shelving sandy beach, 
 
 Where oft the v/aves 
 
 To watery graves 
 in quick succession swiftly bore 
 Each other as they climbed the shore. 
 
The little hollows in the sand 
 Like silvery nests 
 Where sunshine rests. 
 Just for the time appeared to me 
 As lasting as the shore to be ; 
 
But later when the tide had turned, 
 
 I found no trace 
 
 In any place, 
 Of all the basins, which had seemed 
 So lasting, as they brightly gleamed 
 
Beneath the glowing summer sun ; 
 Why had they tied, 
 Like bright hopes dead ? 
 Because the ocean in its sweep. 
 Had gathered all in one great deep. 
 
Here in the pools upon the sand 
 
 1 seem to find 
 
 Within my mind, 
 A type of Churches, Sects, and Creeds, 
 Established for the great world's needs. 
 
Just for a while they will remain, 
 
 Each with its plan 
 
 For blessing man, 
 Till God's great love, like ocean-tide, 
 In one, shall all divisions hide. 
 
Then, folded on our Father's breast, 
 Like tired child, 
 That wept and smiled, 
 At last, we all shall come to be 
 One Church, in its divinity. 
 
M 
 
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 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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