 | The poems of Richard Henry Stoddard |  |
394
[Though thou shouldst live a thousand years]
Though thou shouldst live a thousand years,Whatever fate gives,
Or what refuses,
Let this support thee in thy fears,
Let this console thee in thy tears,
Man loses but the life he lives,
And only lives the life he loses.
Longest and shortest are but one:
The present is the same to all;
The past is done with and forgot;
The future is not yet begun;
Nothing from either can befall,
For none can lose what he has not.
All things from all Eternity
Come round and round the whirling spheres;
It makes no difference if we see
The same things for a hundred years,
Or for a million. They are here.
Who longest lives, who shortest dies,
Loses the same sweet earth and skies,
For they remain—we disappear.
| The poems of Richard Henry Stoddard | |