OH WHERE’S THE HOPE.

1.

Oh where’s the hope like morning’s star, that lit my childhood’s hours,

And smiled upon my dawn of life like sunrise over flowers!

’Tis gone, alas—or faintly seen, is as a rainbow’s ray,

Far—far afield! and as I chase, the phantom flies away.

2.

Sure never have I been too young to sigh o’er vanished hopes;

As if life’s wishes all were made, before an eyelid opes!

Sure never came an hour to me, that brought not in its train,

Some blight to fair and fond desire, and longings nursed in vain.

3.

They dream who tell of life’s long hours, its brightest is its first,

When o’er the sparkling dews of youth, the hues of morning burst;

Those morning hues dispel the mists that made its flowers so gay,

And boyhood’s joys are only bright, as they are borne away.

4.

And all the hopes those dews inspired, like dews dissolve in air,

And melt in fickle forms away, and leave unveiled the glare:

And childhood mourns like hoary Eld a thousand pleasures gone,

And weeps o’er disappointed hours, while yet ’tis early dawn!

5.

Oh can it be that we have lived, before we wept on earth,

And measured out our spirit’s path, before our body’s birth!

Howe’er it be—the babe new-born, begins its life with tears,

And age that weeps o’er childhood gone, but mimics childhood’s years.