Man's Mortality

Our years look behind us like tales that are told,
Our days like to shadows keep passing us by,
We take a short step to our pillow of mould,
And rise on life's stage, like to vapours, and die:

As frail as the grass of the meadow is man,
His youth like the blossom of summer comes on,
That smiles to the sunbeam till autumn turns wan,
And the wind passes o'er it and bids it be gone.

Thus one generation keeps passing away,
And new generations their places attain,
And the friends of our bosom, that leave us to-day,
Shall ne'er fill the circle of friendship again;

In future transactions done under the sun
No portion is left them to act as before:
They go,—and their lives, as if never begun,
In the sleep of the grave shall be heard of no more.

Their exit they make to that awful Unknown,
And vain we conjecture where now they sojourn;
The world's ways and wealth are no longer their own,
To their houses and lands they shall never return.

All nature, though sown with mortality's seed,
Some parts will a spark of long-living retain,
As branches, the tree that's hewn down, will succeed;
But man is too mortal to flourish again,

Life's lamp in uncertainty burneth away,
A weak waning vapour of doubtfullest light,
With cares ever ready to darken its ray,
Till death, the extinguisher, hides it in night:

Our friends and our kindred we see them depart,
Scant peace of our souls daily tearing away;
The dearest of pledges plac'd nearest the heart,
Their memory is all we preserve from decay.

Love, sweetest of joy, is most bitter to trust,
Fate's errand before us is constantly set,
A time is in waiting to turn into dust
The fairest of faces that love ever met.

Death makes no distinction, he slays, as in right,
The wise and the foolish, the king and his slave,
And beauty, that magic of empty delight:
All fall at his footstool of terrors—the grave!