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| O WHY should the spirit of mortal be proud? | |
| Like a fast-flitting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, | |
| A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, | |
| He passes from life to his rest in the grave. | |
| |
| The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, | 5 |
| Be scattered around and together be laid; | |
| And the young and the old, and the low and the high, | |
| Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. | |
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| The child that a mother attended and loved, | |
| The mother that infant’s affection that proved, | 10 |
| The husband that mother and infant that blessed, | |
| Each, all, are away to their dwelling of rest. | |
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| The maid on whose cheek on whose brow, in whose eye, | |
| Shone beauty and pleasure,—her triumphs are by; | |
| And the memory of those that beloved her and praised | 15 |
| Are alike from the minds of the living erased. | |
| |
| The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne, | |
| The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn, | |
| The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave, | |
| Are hidden and lost in the depths of the grave. | 20 |
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| The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap, | |
| The herdsman who climbed with his goats to the steep, | |
| The beggar that wandered in search of his bread, | |
| Have faded away like the grass that we tread. | |
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| The saint that enjoyed the communion of heaven, | 25 |
| The sinner that dared to remain unforgiven, | |
| The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, | |
| Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. | |
| |
| So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed | |
| That wither away to let others succeed; | 30 |
| So the multitude comes, even those we behold, | |
| To repeat every tale that hath often been told. | |
| |
| For we are the same that our fathers have been; | |
| We see the same sights that our fathers have seen,— | |
| We drink the same stream, and we feel the same sun, | 35 |
| And we run the same course that our fathers have run. | |
| |
| The thoughts we are thinking, our fathers would think; | |
| From the death we are shrinking from, they too would shrink; | |
| To the life we are clinging to, they too would cling; | |
| But it speeds from the earth like a bird on the wing. | 40 |
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| They loved, but their story we cannot unfold; | |
| They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold; | |
| They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers may come; | |
| They joyed, but the voice of their gladness is dumb. | |
| |
| They died, ay! they died! and we things that are now, | 45 |
| Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, | |
| Who make in their dwellings a transient abode, | |
| Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road. | |
| |
| Yea! hope and despondence, and pleasure and pain, | |
| Are mingled together like sunshine and rain; | 50 |
| And the smile and the tear, and the song and the dirge, | |
| Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. | |
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| ’T is the wink of an eye, ’t is the draught of a breath, | |
| From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, | |
| From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,— | 55 |
| O why should the spirit of mortal be proud? | |
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