LIFE.
1 What is the existence of man's life
But open war or slumbered strife?
Where sickness to his sense presents
The combat of the elements,
And never feels a perfect peace
Till death's cold hand signs his release.
2 It is a storm—where the hot blood
Outvies in rage the boiling flood:
And each loud passion of the mind
Is like a furious gust of wind,
Which beats the bark with many a wave,
Till he casts anchor in the grave.
3 It is a flower—which buds, and grows,
And withers as the leaves disclose;
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep,
Like fits of waking before sleep,
Then shrinks into that fatal mould
Where its first being was enrolled.
4 It is a dream—whose seeming truth
Is moralised in age and youth;
Where all the comforts he can share
As wandering as his fancies are,
Till in a mist of dark decay
The dreamer vanish quite away.
5 It is a dial—which points out
The sunset as it moves about;
And shadows out in lines of night
The subtle stages of Time's flight,
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid
His body in perpetual shade.
6 It is a weary interlude—
Which doth short joys, long woes, include:
The world the stage, the prologue tears;
The acts vain hopes and varied fears;
The scene shuts up with loss of breath,
And leaves no epilogue but Death!