'Tis now, alas, beyond recall,
Lament it as we may,
No more around our feet shall fall
The light of yesterday.
It came as other days have come,
Its smiles were kindly shed,
But, oh, its blossoms in our wake
Lie withered now and dead.
No sighs can breathe away our guilt
Or bid the past return,
If we have idly sown or failed
This solemn truth to learn:
That every yesterday whose wreck
Bestrews life's checkered way
Has worn amid the fleeting now,
The raiment of today.
Then pluck each moment ere it dies,
The present is thine own,
But, oh, the future's hidden light
Belongs to God alone.
Be thoughtful now; to wisdom's song
Give thou a ready ear,
"Twill make each yesterday a charm
And save tomorrow's tear.
Each common deed our hands perform,
Though small the act may be;
Each thought unuttered in the soul,
Lives on immortally.
It springs into a welcome flower
To deck the clover leaf,
Or adds a cheerless thorn to swell
The waste of memory.
I am dreaming tonight in the glow of the moon, Dreaming of days that have vanished too soon. Of days that were lit with the smiles of the dead, Of friends who alas to Love's Kingdom have fled.
How long the days were by the shadows they cast,
How short they now seem in the light of the past.
How brightly they beamed on my innocent brow
The brightest of all but a memory now!
From the moment the sun first appeared in the east
Till he sank in the west was a cycle at least.
Now further advanced, mid the cares of the way,
It seems that my life has been only a day.
I laugh as the years now return to my view,
When the fringe of the earth was the forest I knew;
When I dreamily followed the smoke as it curled
And thought it discolored the brow of the world.
And then, as I knelt in the twilight to pray,
And a mother's soft kiss pressed the seal of the day,
How boldly I dared the dark shadows to creep
And folded my cares on her bosom to sleep!
The hills have grown smaller in stature since then,
And smaller have dwindled the figures of men.
A mist in my vision the scenery mars
And the oak trees no longer reach up to the stars.
But this is the spring of the tenderest sigh:
My childhood's fond playmate no longer is nigh.
Too fair for this earth she has lightly put down
The weight of the cross for the glow of the crown.
Farewell to my childhood, a tender farewell,
How much I have loved thee no music can tell.
How deeply I mourn o'er thy bright moments lost,
Oh naught but grim sorrow can measure the cost.
How much I still prize the sweet message you bring.
Let deeds to the harp of thy melody sing
'Til ransomed, uprisen and free from the sod
I greet thee again in the Gardens of God!
Softly flows the sweet Oconee-loved companion of my youth
By whose brink, in days now vanished, sought my eager soul the
By whose soft and silent waters, as in boyhood's younger day,
Still my feet, in older fancy, love at eventide to stray.
Often on its liquid bosom flashed the truant's skillful oar,
As the music from the belfry died upon the distant shore,
And, tonight, in contemplation, as the world goes to its rest,
I am drifting with the current on the old Oconee's breast.
Drifting in the misty moonlight-drifting in the bark of dreams-
Fanned by fragrant recollectons-oh, how fair the vision seems!
April on the dewy landscape, April on the burnished scroll,
April calling unto April in the climate of the soul!
Hark, I hear the echoes calling! "Tis the music of the bell
Chiming out its admonition: "Use the passing hours well.
For the present reaps the future, ordered to a perfect plan,
And the youth, in noble merit, sows the laurel of the man."
Oh, I love to wander backward to the old Oconee's brink,
There to revel at the fountains where my boyhood used to drink,
When the world was like the campus, green in summer's glad array,
And the dreams with which I filled it were as golden as the day!
How, alas, those dreams have vanished, fading like a fairy ship,
Or the passing of the rainbow, when the clouds have ceased to drip;
How the friends, who never failed me, now lie dreaming in the snow,
Where, unwithered by the winter, love's pure amaranth will grow.
Athens, old and lovely Athens, green forever be thy groves,
Where, as in the years now sleeping, still my fond ambition roves,
Happy, too, each stately mansion loved in ardent youth so well
And within whose portals, dreaming, loves my spirit yet to dwell.
But, though like thy predecessor, thou, too, in the dust shall fall,
Still, from out thy scattered ashes, will the old, sweet music call.
Fresh within my heart forever will thy recollections cling,
Like a vine around the cedar in the splendor of the spring.
And, beside the old Oconee, in the years that still remain,
Often will my soul, returning, dream in solitude again.
Yea, amid the gathering twilight that gives token of the gloom
It will suit my heart to slumber where its hope began to bloom,
'Til the mystic day approaches, 'mid the splendor of the morn, Lighting up life's El Dorado, smiling on its crystal dawn "Til I view it by the margin of that music-haunted stream Where the glory of life's waking will be grander than its dream.
[To. Mrs. T. R. H.]
"Tis night! the calm and holy night,
When nature lulls to rest,
And sleep the children of the light
On her maternal breast;
The rose is dreaming of the day
That smiled upon her bloom,
And visions of the coming May,
Float 'round her in the gloom.
I, too, am dreaming of the light
But not the light of day,-
The face of one whose fairer sight
Outsmiled the field's array,
To whose soft spirit's azure gleam
'Neath silken lashes long,
The golden summers gave their dream
And taught her lips their song.
"Tis when the day has ceased to blush
And sleeps the shrouded land
That awed by twilight's holy hush
I feel her tender hand;
"Tis then I hear, in whispers sweet,
The voice of one I loved,
The tread of her whose fairy feet
With mine, through summer, roved.
Who knelt, at twilight's hour, to pray,
Her ringlets pressing mine,
While, through the gloaming's mystic gray,
The stars began to shine;
Then, sweetened by a mother's kiss,
Her pure lips sought my own,
Ere, on that borderland of bliss
The balm of rest came down.
In thought once more I wander back
Led by her magic wand-
Along Life's sorrow-beaten track,
To childhood's rainbow-land.
Again the summer scenes unfold,
The clover fields appear,
The air is filled with liquid gold
And she is smiling near!
But, oh, my heart with sorrow fills
And tears bedim my eyes;—
She wanders now among the hills
Where beauty never dies;
Where childhood's everlasting crown
Sits lovely on her brow
And where, more worthy of her own---
The angels love her now.
Oh God! grant to my soul's unrest
Dreams of that brighter day
That Beulah clime beyond the west
To which she led the way.
Where by the waters pure and bright
Our feet again may rove,
Where never fades the morning light,
And God Himself is Love!
On mountain peak and meadow land and by the surging sea
And on the crumbling ivy wall the light falls dreamily;
A veil lies on the somber woods; the plaintive winds are sighing
And, in the hollows of the dell, the summer days are dying.
Dying on the ruddy stream
Dying in the drowsy beam,
Dying into but a dream-
The summer days are dying.
Amid the silence of the grove the withered timbers crack;
In deeper thunders roll and toss the murmuring cataract;
In sterner echoes from the gloom the russet hills replying,
Hurl back their answer through the woods-"the summer days are
dying."
Dying on the crumbled wall,
Dying on the waterfall,
Dying dimly over all
The summer days are dying.
The leaf deserts the parent bough and glimmers to the ground,
Filled to the edge with summer's gold, by autumn's breath unbound,
To mingle with the daisy's bust, in beauty's slumber lying;
And whispers to the violets-"the summer days are dying."
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