University of Virginia Library

WRITTEN AT CUMMINGTON, 1870.

How many hearts are cold,
That throbbed with wild delight;
How many eyes are dim,
That beamed with living light;
How many voices sweet,
Are stilled forevermore;
How many restless feet,
That trod from door to door;
How many homes are gone,
That love and beauty filled;
How many radiant hopes,
Hath sin and sorrow chilled;
How many hands that toiled,
Are folded soft away;
How many glorious forms,
Have mouldered back to clay,
Since first I left these hills,
And made my home afar,
Where green savannas lie,
Beneath the evening star.
Since then the flight of time
Has borne me swiftly on,
At most a few brief years,
Shall pass ere I am gone.
Thus ever goes the old,
And ever comes the new,
The slender sapling springs,
Where once the old oak grew;
And nature striving still,
To heal the waste of time,
Clothes with new life the earth
As in her early prime.