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| METHINKS, when on the languid eye | |
| Life’s autumn scenes grow dim; | |
| When evening’s shadows veil the sky; | |
| And pleasure’s siren hymn | |
| Grows fainter on the tuneless ear, | 5 |
| Like echoes from another sphere, | |
| Or dreams of seraphim— | |
| It were not sad to cast away | |
| This dull and cumbrous load of clay. | |
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| It were not sad to feel the heart | 10 |
| Grow passionless and cold; | |
| To feel those longings to depart | |
| That cheered the good of old; | |
| To clasp the faith which looks on high, | |
| Which fires the Christian’s dying eye, | 15 |
| And makes the curtain-fold | |
| That falls upon his wasting breast, | |
| The door that leads to endless rest. | |
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| It seems not lonely thus to lie | |
| On that triumphant bed, | 20 |
| Till the pure spirit mounts on high | |
| By white-winged seraphs led: | |
| Where glories, earth may never know, | |
| O’er “many mansions” lingering glow, | |
| In peerless lustre shed. | 25 |
| It were not lonely thus to soar | |
| Where sin and grief can sting no more. | |
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| And though the way to such a goal | |
| Lies through the clouded tomb, | |
| If on the free, unfettered soul | 30 |
| There rest no stains of gloom, | |
| How should its aspirations rise | |
| Far through the blue unpillared skies, | |
| Up to its final home, | |
| Beyond the journeyings of the sun, | 35 |
| Where streams of living waters run! | |
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