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Slide 1: by Edgar A. Guest
Slide 2: If this were all of life we'll know,
Slide 3: If this brief space of breath
Slide 4: Were all there is to human toil
Slide 5: If death were really death,
Slide 6: And never should the soul arise A finer world to see,
Slide 7: How foolish would our struggles seem, How grim the earth would be!
Slide 8: If living were the whole of life, To end in seventy years,
Slide 9: How pitiful its joys would seem! How idle all its tears!
Slide 10: There'd be no faith to keep us true, No hope to keep us strong,
Slide 11: And only fools would cherish dreams— No smile would last for long.
Slide 12: How purposeless the strife would be If there were nothing more,
Slide 13: If there were not a plan to serve, An end to struggle for!
Slide 14: No reason for a mortal's birth Except to have him die--
Slide 15: How silly all the goals would seem For which men bravely try.
Slide 16: There must be something after death; Behind the toil of man
Slide 17: There must exist a God divine Who's working out a plan;
Slide 18: And this brief journey that we know As life must really be
Slide 19: The gateway to a finer world That some day we shall see.
Slide 20: Note: This poem is written in my mother's hand on the last page of a Bible I found while cleaning our my father's library in 1997. The Bible is inscribed as follows: To Ruby Lee Perry: For the best composition on the Life of Paul. From your Leader….W. L Watkins There is no date, but it must have been given to her in Park Street Baptist Church in Columbia S.C., around 1921 when she was a teenager. It is one of only two writings I have in my mother's hand. My mother did not live her "seventy years". She died at age 33 on Christmas Day, 1941, when I was seven. Two younger siblings died in their early years and her sister, Margaret Perry, died at age 21. Perhaps that is why this poem meant a lot to her. Until my children were born, I was the only surviving member of the Perry family. My father, James P. Wesberry died exactly 51 years after my mother, on Christmas Day 1992. I look forward to the