Years pass like the hours of a summer day,
And leave no memento to mark their stay.
We have told of the faith in the Rock alive
In the year eighteen hundred and fifty-five.
Let us turn time’s current, and backward go,
And see what new wonders her book will show,
By skipping two centuries, just to derive
The knowledge of sixteen fifty-five.
There’s still a dark wood, and a winding stream,
Where the cold, bright stars, and the moon’s pale beam,