In all the ups and downs of life
We’ve found in you a constant friend;
You’ve counselled peace, discouraged strife,
And taught us all our ways to mend.
For eight-and-twenty years you’ve stood
A watchman on the outer wall;
Repressing evil, aiding good,
And kindly watching over all.
Though age may enervate your frame
And dim the lustre of your eye,
No lapse of time can soil your name,
For names like yours can never die.
[Lines]
On the death of Miss Mary Hayes.
Another star has left the sky,
Another flower has ceased to bloom;
The fairest are the first to die,
The best go earliest to the tomb.
That radiant star, whose cheering ray,
Adorn’d her quiet, rural home,
Went down, in darkness, at mid-day.
And left that quiet home in gloom.
That lovely flower, admired so much,
In all its loveliness, was lost,
It withered at the fatal touch
Of death’s untimely, killing frost.
The mourners go about the street,
While children tell their tale of woe
To every passer-by they meet,
In faltering accents, faint and low.
“Dear Mary Hayes is dead,” they say,
While tears roll down their cheeks like rain,
“Her eyes are closed, she’s cold as clay,”
And then their tears gush out again.