  YOUTH. Pilgrim of life! thy hoary head Is bent with age, thine eye Looks downward to the silent dead, Wreck of mortality!— The friends who flourished in thy day Have sought their narrow home; Their spirits whisper, "Come away!"— AGE. My soul replies, I come.— I tread the path I trod a child, The fields I loved of yore; The flowers that 'neath my footsteps smiled Now meet my gaze no more. It was an aged tree, Hollowed by time's resistless stroke, When life was green with me. Its lofty head it proudly rears To greet the summer sky, Whilst, bending with the weight of years, I feebly totter by. And hushed are all the thousand songs That filled these branches high: Echo no more for me prolongs The woodland minstrelsy. Silence has gathered round life's hall; My friends are in the clay; I hear no more the footsteps fall, That cheered my early day; I see no more the faces dear, Which shone around my hearth: Bereft of all—I sojourn here— Still happy, though on earth!— And canst thou smile when all are gone Who shared thy youthful prime; Content to wait and watch alone, To grapple still with time? How comes it that thou thus below Hast rest above the sod, Which brings to memory scenes of woe? AGE. It is the will of God! |
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