IN THE MORNING OF LIFE.
In the morning of life, when its sweet sunny smile
Shines bright on our path, we may dream we are blest;
We may look on the world as a gay fairy isle,
Where sorrow 's unknown, and the weary have rest!
But the brightness that shone, and the hopes we enjoy'd,
Are clouded ere noon, and soon vanish away;
While the dark beating tempest, on life's stormy tide,
Obscures all the sweets of the morning's bright ray!
Then where are those bowers, in some gay, happy plain,
Where hope ne'er deceives, and where love is aye true;
Where the brightness of morning shines on but to gain
A sunshine as bright and as promising too?
Oh! ask for it not in this valley of sighs,
Where we smile but to weep, and we ne'er can find rest;
For the world we would wish shines afar in the skies,
Where sorrow 's unknown—'tis the home of the blest!
ON THE DEATH OF A PROMISING CHILD.
Oh! weep not thus, though the child thou hast loved,
Still, still as the grave, in silence sleeps on;
'Midst the tears that are shed, his eye is unmoved,
And the beat of that bosom for ever is gone:
Then weep not thus, for the moment is blest
When the wand'rer sleeps on his couch of rest!
The world to him, with its sorrows and sighs,
Has fled like a dream when the morn appears;
While the spirit awakes in the light of the skies,
No more to revisit this valley of tears:
Then weep not thus, for the moment is blest
When the wand'rer sleeps on his couch of rest!
Few, few were his years; but, had they been more,
The sunshine which smiled might have vanish'd away,
And he might have fallen on some far friendless shore,
Or been wreck'd amidst storms in some desolate bay:
Then weep not thus, for the moment is blest
When the wand'rer sleeps on his couch of rest!