Morning Songs :: :: University of Virginia Library

In our spring, the glorious sunlight,
Spread his fulgent light abroad;
And her vernal grass, and roses,
Decorates our pilgrim road.

Roses in their rarest beauty,
Grasses of an evergreen,
They are placed on special duty
In this land, by hands unseen.

From the spring, there dawns the summer;
And fair roses full in bloom,
Soon begins in ceaseless number,
Dropping petals, one by one.

So our youth doth wax to manhood,
And the childish face hath fled,
Like the fading roses' petals.
Fall among the grasses dead.

And as dawns the dreary autumn,
With its ripened sheaves of grain,
And the sweeipng winds are tossing,
Golden sheaves upon the plain,

Come man's autumn, short the warning,
Bright hath shone the golden sun,
Day by day, his light grows dimmer;
Soon life's journey will be done.

Scarcely dawns the fall, till winter,
Comes with chilling hands so cold,
Garners in the ripened harvest;
Brings the sheep into the fold.

So man's lot is like the harvest;
Reaped and stored away on high,
Some like grain that never ripen;
On the field are left to die.