Thou hast been present with thy watchful care,
Guarding a heart too prone to dream at best,
Too much forgetting one whose sinless prayer
Has lingered round his home a heavenly guest.
But brightly now the sun of promise shines,
The dark and stormy waves of time along,
With all some token of thy virtue twines,
Sweet as the cadence of the evening song;
And truly now, when youth’s wild day is o’er,
And every fancied passion’s hushed to rest,