“So the multitude goes like the flower or the weed,
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes—even these we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
“Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
“’Tis the wink of an eye,—’tis the draught of a breath;
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,