That marched so calmly round above her,
Was a little dimmed,—as when evening steals
Upon noon's hot face. Yet one couldn't but love her,
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;
And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"
While yet I looked, what a change there came!
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan;
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet just as busily swung she on;
The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust:
The hands, that over the dial swept,
Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept
And still there came that silver tone
From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone
(Let me never forget till my dying day
The tone or the burden of her lay),
"Passing away! passing away!"
JOHN PIERPONT.
*
LINES
FOUND IN HIS BIBLE IN THE GATE-HOUSE AT WESTMINSTER.
E'en such is time; that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days:
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
*
MY AIN COUNTREE.