Classic Poem

" HOW slow we drive! but yet the hour will come,
When friends shall greet me with affection's kiss;
When, seated at my boyhood's happy home,
I shall enjoy a mild, contented bliss,
Not often met with in a world like this!
Then I shall see that brother, youngest born,
I used to play with in my sportiveness;
And, from a mother's holiest look, shall learn
A parent's thanks to God, for a lov'd son's return.

" And there is one, who, with a downcast eye,
Will be the last to welcome me; but yet
My memory tells me of a parting sigh,
And of a lid with tears of sorrow wet,
And how she bade me never to forget
A friend — and blush'd. Oh! I shall see again
The same kind look I saw, when last we met,
And parted. Tell me then that life is vain —
That joy, if met with once, is seldom met again. "

*****

* * * See ye not the falling, fallen mass?
Hark! hear ye not the drowning swimmer's cry?
Look on the ruins of the desperate pass!
Gaze at the hurried ice that rushes by,
Bearing a freight of wo and agony,
To that last haven where we all must go. —
Resistless as the stormy clouds that fly
Above our reach, is that dark stream below! —
May peace be in its ebb — there's ruin in its flow.