  When the babe is swung in its pearly cot, the warm sun shining, the song-birds gay, Cool shades among, in its lacework grot, the child reclining doth dreamful sway. Hope’s hand, entwining life’s harp new strung with joyous garlands, its sound doth stay, And he thinks earth heaven, to him God-given, nor cares though the passing hours delay. From the threshold of life on the bright pathway that stretches afar to the infinite, Youth yearns for the strife, as a child for play, and his dreamings are of a well-won height. As at dawn of day when the Morning Star unbinds the zone of the virgin Light, We watch, all breathless, for beauty deathless, so heaven’s beyond us, yet seems in sight. And then, ah, then, as the years go by, and hope grows weary with waiting long, When trust in men we must fain deny, the miserere replaces song. The soul plods on, and heaven is gone; we can but suffer and yet be strong. When the snows of age fall thick and fast, and passion has faded like flowers that grow, The memory sage dreams dreams of the past and all that has made it have joys below. When the friends long laid in the grave, at last, stand beckoning us in the twilight glow, And wrongs endured prove that which cured, the heaven behind us too late we know. The heaven of man is never here; it always is where his treasures are. To-day’s brief span arches little dear; the stream of bliss seems wider afar. From this to this the path is drear; there’s always something each joy to mar, Till the past that is real becomes ideal under the gold of life’s twilight star. |
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