 | Poems of Rural Life in Common English |  |
68
CHANGES
And oh! what changes we all know,
Long years can bring in one small place,
In names and shapes, from face to face,
As souls will come and souls will go:
And here, where hills have all stood fast,
While babes have come and men have pass'd,
The wind-stream softly seems to sigh,
‘Man's lifetime glides away as I.’
Long years can bring in one small place,
In names and shapes, from face to face,
As souls will come and souls will go:
And here, where hills have all stood fast,
While babes have come and men have pass'd,
The wind-stream softly seems to sigh,
‘Man's lifetime glides away as I.’
The child may open here his eyes,
Long miles away to live a man,
The mother here may end her span
Of life, where no dear daughter lies.
As time steals on, from day to day,
And nothing stands at one same stay,
The wind-blast softly seems to sigh,
‘Man's lifetime glides away as I.’
Long miles away to live a man,
The mother here may end her span
Of life, where no dear daughter lies.
69
And nothing stands at one same stay,
The wind-blast softly seems to sigh,
‘Man's lifetime glides away as I.’
As clapper-sounded bells ring fast,
They tell the moments out, and clocks
That slowly sound by knocks on knocks,
May tell how daily hours have pass'd;
In Sunday chimes a week is fled,
In Easter knells a year is dead,
And airy bell-sounds seem to say,
Like us man's lifetime glides away.
They tell the moments out, and clocks
That slowly sound by knocks on knocks,
May tell how daily hours have pass'd;
In Sunday chimes a week is fled,
In Easter knells a year is dead,
And airy bell-sounds seem to say,
Like us man's lifetime glides away.
| Poems of Rural Life in Common English | |