Wandering, and never at rest,
After the long flight of years,
To look on her face again
Through a mist of weary tears.
The sun of life is falling
Low down the pale, wan west;
The twilight draweth nearer,
The time for peace and rest.
THE FLIGHT OF TIME.
CHAPTER I.—THE CREATION.
The flight of Time! how strange, aye, how strange thy story!
Thou wast when vast creation’s wondrous glory
Lighted up the weird inanimate universe,
And bade the intense darkness and the gloom disperse.
Aye, when the earth was shrouded in Plutonian gloom,
All without form, and void, and lifeless as the tomb,
’Twas then God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,”
Establishing divisions of the day and night;
’Twas then the boding shadow of thy mighty wing
Fell on the brooding sea and every earthly thing;
And when the lighted spheres stood forth sublime,
Commenced thy inexorable flight, O Time!
And wast thou amazed at that momentous hour?
Didst veil thy face to God’s stupendous power?
Thou heardst the song the planetary systems sung,
As o’er the deeps and through the starry heights it rung.
And earth was glad with sunshine, and her lovely hills
Bloomed fair beside the rivers and the rills;
And waves of melody rolled down from hill and vale;
Sweet breath of flowers was borne upon the gale.
Created man rejoiced in Eden’s innocence,
His every want supplied without recompense;
He dwelt with fair Eve in ever blooming bowers,
A man and woman, unconscious of their powers.
And thou wast there when lovely Eve, the tempted, fell,
And man was hurled from thence to verge of hell!
Then was vice and death and carnage ushered in,
And vile deceit, and cunning, by the scourge of sin.
Man became an outcast, with a curse upon his head,
Doomed to toil and drudgery for his daily bread.
Leaving lovely Eden and innocence behind,
With sore tempted and troubled heart, and all blind
With remorseful tears, and vague dread of the unknown,
Clasping the hand of Eve, they faced the world alone!
Wast thou moved to pity, O remorseless Time?
For ne’er was scene more pitiful or more sublime.
Oh, momentous, measureless, sad, and direful fall!
A covert sin, an act, that sorely smote us all,
Making man’s feverish life a battle all the way,
From earliest morn unto his latest day;
Beset by every evil, no rest is given—
A lost and ruined soul, with scarce a hope of heaven!
But the world was peopled, and from every plain
Rose cities grand that gained an envious fame;
And the ships of commerce whitened every sea,
And men and nations all strove for the master;
And war and cruel bloodshed was the common lot
Of nations, who supremacy and conquest sought;
The centuries were marred by pomp and pride,
And servility and wrong was rife on every side.
And through the grinding cycles of corroded years
Thy tireless pinions swept through seas of blood and tears
Of nations, and of peoples, who rose up and fell—
Many nations, who unto death fought brave and well
For country and their loved country’s deathless fame,
For tempting martial glory and a deathless name;
Nations, who in pride and lust of power forgot
God and justice, and only aggrandizement sought.