CHAPTER II.

’Tis well that childhood and youth should be bright, All sunny with bloom, and the golden light Of innocent days of love and fair hope, Gathering strength with life’s battles to cope. Awake or asleep, a vision, a dream; The real and unreal are floating between Mysterious shores, as the stream glides away; The mystery of life, and the grace of a day. Ah, who can measure the fleetness of years? The height of our joys, the depth of our tears? The horizon bounds our dim vision here, And our thoughts are vague as the boundless sphere Bordering round us; vast ethereal sea On the awful confines of eternity!

Anxiously we peer into the abysmal gloom, Striving to read there futurity’s doom; And we walk with hope in its radiant light, Or grope lone and lost through the realms of night. ’Tis either a season of bliss or pain, Of grievous loss, or of welcome gain; The peace of love, soothing every care, Or a barren waste and a grim despair. A few there are that glide calmly between, Leading sunny lives, knowing no extreme Of love or of hate, of sorrow or pain. Caring not for the world, its wealth nor its fame, Serenely they glide like a summer day Down the stream of time, flitting swift away. What are thy works, thy wisdom, O man? A little point in God’s marvellous plan Of creation; a weak dependent, thou, On help Divine; doubt written on thy brow. E’en the orb we inhabit, we dimly trace Its spectral course through the realms of space, As careening we sweep through voids unknown, Round an infinite centre, Alcyone!

Aye, life’s a mystery, a fleeting breath, Pursued by phantoms, o’ertaken by death. ’Tis merely a step from day into night, From darkness into the marvellous light Of a day of golden, supernal bloom Beyond the confines of death and the tomb. Our childhood’s a joyous and peaceful dream, With no set purpose to darken between; To sing, and to shout, to frolic away The bright, happy hours of the rosy day. But youth will awaken, and hear afar The muffled roar of the world’s stern war. Ambition will rise in their hearts of fire, To fame and honors they too will aspire. And thus it hath been, and ever ’twill be, Till time dies out in eternity.