Tokens

Each day upon the yellow Nile, 'tis said.
Joseph, the youthful ruler, cast forth wheat,
That haply, floating to his father's feet,—
The sad old father, who believed him dead,—
It might be sign in Egypt there was bread;
And thus the patriarch, past the desert sands
And scant oasis fringed with thirsty green,
Be lured toward the love that yearned unseen.
So, flung and scattered—ah! by what dear hands?—
On the swift-rushing and invisible tide,
Small tokens drift adown from far, fair lands,
And say to us, who in the desert bide,
"Are you athirst? Are there no sheaves to bind?
Beloved, here is fulness; follow on and find."