And love which never can expire, Whose origin is from on high, Throws o'er thy morn a ray of fire, From the pure fountains of the sky; That ray which glows and brightens still Unchanged, eternal and divine; Where seraphs own its holy thrill, And bow before its gleaming shrine.
Thou desolate and dying year! Prophetic of our final fall; Thy buds are gone, thy leaves are sear, Thy beauties shrouded in the pall; And all the garniture that shed, A brilliancy upon thy prime, Hath like a morning vision fled Unto the expanded grave of time.
Time! Time! in thy triumphal flight, How all life's phantoms fleet away; The smile of hope, and young delight, Fame's meteor beam, and Fancy's ray: They fade; and on the heaving tide, Rolling its stormy waves afar, Are borne the wreck of human pride, The broken wreck of Fortune's war.
There in disorder, dark and wild, Are seen the fabrics once so high; Which mortal vanity had piled As emblems of eternity! And deemed the stately piles, whose forms Frowned in their majesty sublime, Would stand unshaken by the storms That gathered round the brow of Time.
Thou desolate and dying year! Earth's brightest pleasures fade like thine; Like evening shadows disappear, And leave the spirit to repine. The stream of life that used to pour Its fresh and sparkling waters on, While Fate stood watching on the shore, And numbered all the moments gone:—
Where hath the morning splendour flown, Which danced upon that crystal stream? Where are the joys to childhood known, When life was an enchanted dream? Enveloped in the starless night, Which destiny hath overspread; Enroll'd upon that trackless flight Where the death wing of time hath sped!
Oh! thus hath life its even-tide Of sorrow, loneliness, and grief; And thus divested of its pride, It withers like the yellow leaf: Oh! such is life's autumnal bower, When plundered of its summer bloom; And such is life's autumnal hour, Which heralds man unto the tomb!
New-York:
Printed by Scatcherd & Adams,