Mary Mapes Dodge Quote

For ever and ever, my darling, yes—
Goodness and love are undying;
Only the troubles and cares of earth
Are winged from the first for flying.
Our way we plough
In the furrow "now;"
But after the tilling and growing the sheaf;
Soil for the root, but the sun for the leaf—
And God keepeth watch forever.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 287.