Poems (Ford)/Long Ago

LONG AGO.

Oh, days of life's glad spring-time,
How quickly ye glide by,
How soon dark clouds sweep over
Your morning's rosy sky;
Bright waves of Time's broad river,
Too swiftly do ye flow
With ceaseless motion ever
Down to the long ago.

And do our days drift idly
Like sunbeams o'er the tide,
Leaving no trace behind them
Upon Time's ocean wide?
Or are they richly freighted,
As from our sight they flow,
With treasures for the future,
Won from the long ago?

Or, as they melt in foam-wreaths
To ebb and flow no more,
Where golden sands are gleaming
On the eternal shore,
Must their last breath be wearied
With sighs of bitter woe
For bright hopes dead and buried
Down in the long ago?

Alas! bright days, too early
Goes down your noonday sun;
The night of death enshrouds us
Before our work is done;
And many a path is thorny
Where roses now might blow,
Had we not idly wasted
The days of long ago.

Like scentless, withered flowers
Upon a streamlet cast,
Do aimless lives drift downward
And sink into the past;
They leave no vacant places,
For them no tear-drops flow,—
They pass unknown, forgotten,
Down to the long ago.

Then, as our days are passing,
And we are passing too,
Let earth's vain joys hide never
That bright land from our view
Where from the bounteous Giver
All happiness shall flow,
And grief and death come never
As in the long ago.