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| THE MORE we live, more brief appear | |
| Our life’s succeeding stages: | |
| A day to childhood seems a year, | |
| And years like passing ages. | |
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| The gladsome current of our youth, | 5 |
| Ere passion yet disorders, | |
| Steals lingering like a river smooth | |
| Along its grassy borders. | |
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| But as the care-worn cheeks grow wan, | |
| And sorrow’s shafts fly thicker, | 10 |
| Ye Stars, that measure life to man, | |
| Why seem your courses quicker? | |
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| When joys have lost their bloom and breath | |
| And life itself is vapid, | |
| Why, as we reach the Falls of Death, | 15 |
| Feel we its tide more rapid? | |
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| It may be strange—yet who would change | |
| Time’s course to slower speeding, | |
| When one by one our friends have gone | |
| And left our bosoms bleeding? | 20 |
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| Heaven gives our years of fading strength | |
| Indemnifying fleetness; | |
| And those of youth, a seeming length, | |
| Proportion’d to their sweetness. | |
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