In its giving and its getting,
In its smiling and its fretting,
In its peaceful years of toiling
    And its awful days of war,
Ever on the world is moving,
And all human life is proving
It is reaching toward the purpose
    That the great God meant it for.

Through its laughing and its weeping,
Through its losing and its keeping,
Through its follies and its labours,
    Weaving in and out of sight
To the end from the beginning,
Through all virtue and all sinning,
Reeled from God's great spool of Progress,
    Runs the golden thread of Right.

All the darkness and the errors,
All the sorrows and the terrors,
Time has painted in the background
    On the canvas of the World;
All the beauty of life's story
He will do in tones of glory,
When these final blots of shadows
    From his brushes have been hurled.

--Ella Wheeler Wilcox, in Woman's Home Companion.