You're training for my lady, flower!
You're opening for my love;
The glory of her summer bower,
Shrill sky larks soar above.
Go, twine her locks with rose buds,
Or breathe upon her breast,
While zephyrs cool the water-floods,
And rock the halcyon's nest.
But oh, there is another worm
Ere long will visit her,
And revel on her lovely form,
In the dark sepulchre :
Yet from that sepulchre shall spring
A flower as sweet as this;
Hard by the nightingale shall sing,
Soft winds its petals kiss.
Frail emblems of frail beauty, ye!
In beauty who would trust?
Since all that charms the eye must be
Consign'd to worms and dust:
Yet, like the flower that decks her tomb,
Her soul shall quit the clod,
And shine, in amaranthine bloom,
Fast by the throne of God.
Another year hath passed, and many a dream
Of youth, and joy, and gladness hath gone bye;
Some that we lov'd have passed from life's gay stream
To the dark ocean of eternity.
When the past year was young, with hearts elate,
And stirring hopes, they gladly hail'd the spring;
Unlearned to read the future page of fate,
And buoyant with their wild imagining.
Now they are gone, and dark oblivion draws
O'er fond rememberance her impervious veil,
Save when a casual sigh escapes for those
Whose memory we had dreamed could never fail.
Change we the dirge-like strain,
More gaily sweep the strings,
Welcome the infant year again,
With gladness on its wings.
Oh, smooth the wrinkled brow,
And wipe the tearful eye!
Nor sigh like mourners now
For days that have gone bye.
Sweet flowers around him flinging,
Behold the jocund boy!
Young spring his bright path winging
To bid us wake to joy.
Lady my song is o'er, my silent lyre
Perchance may sound no more at thy desire,
Yet mayst thou find through life's succeeding hours,
A rainbow tinted course, a pathway strewn with flowers.
Strange that the wind should be left so free,
To play with a flower, or tear a tree;
To range or ramble where'er it will,
And, as it lists, to be fierce or still;
Above and around to promise life,
Then mingle the earth and sky in strife;
Gently to breathe with the morning light,
Yet growl like a fetter'd fiend ere night;
Or to love, and cherish, and bless to day,
What to-morrow it ruthlessly rends away.
Strange that the sun should call into birth
All the fairest flowers and fruits of earth,
Then view them wither and see them die,
While they cheer the soul and gladden the eye;
At morn its child is the pride of Spring,
At night, a shrivell'd and loathsome thing;
To-day there is hope aud life in its breath,
To-morrow it sinks to a useless death;
Strange doth it seem that the sun should joy
To give life alone that it may destroy.
Strange that the ocean should come and go,
With its daily and nightly ebb and flow;
Should bear on its placid breast at morn
The bark that ere night must be tempest torn;
Or gently cherish it all the way it must roam,
Then leave it a wreck within sight of home,
To smile as the mariner's toils are o'er,
Then wash the dead to the cottage door;
Or gently ripple along the strand,
To watch the widow behold him land.
But stranger than all that man should die,
When his plans are form'd and his hopes are high;
He walks forth a lord of the earth to-day,
And to-morrow beholds him a part of its clay.
He is born in sorrow, and cradled in pain,
And from youth to age it is labour in vain ;
And all that seventy years can show,
Is, that wealth is trouble, and wisdom woe;
That he treads a path of care and strife,
Who drinks of the poison'd cup of life.
Alas! if we murmur at things like these,
That reflection tells us are wise decrees;
That the wind is not ever a gentle breath,
That the sun is often the bearer of death,
That the ocean-wave is not always still,
And that life is chequer'd with good and ill;
If we know 'tis well that such change should be,
What do we learn from the things we see?
That an erring and sinning child of dust
Should not wonder nor murmur, but hope and trust.
How short-lived are the best resolutions made in our own strength, they resemble the early dew which soon passeth away, and the grass upon the house top which withereth before it groweth up.
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