SWEET, happy, cherished childhood hours! How bright and beautiful thy golden Moments are! How glorious seems the sunlight Of thy sky! Each morning's silvery dawn Is brief with love, and guileless innocence Adorns each day. Thine is an era of Brief purity; and sinless hearts upon Thy altar place their offerings of delight And present joy. No pangs of doubt, or pride, or hatred rise To crush the trusting heart of innocence. No dark remorse a spiteful entrance finds Within the placid bosom of a child, Where confidence and love and truth repose As naturally as perfume in the rose. But, oh, how brief the stay! how transient all The bliss! Like a fair meteor in an eastern Sky, that shines along a lovely garden way, Revealing, by its brilliant, shimmering light, The glorious beauty of the opening scene, Where fairy music melts upon the ear, And flowers and birds and fields and limpid Streams in paradisic beauty richly glow. Thus comest thou, sweet, happy childhood hours, With only one bright season in a life,— One little nebula upon the sky of time, On which the eye may turn in after years, And, by the aid of memory, trace the stars Of uncorroded pleasure clustering there. Ah, could the youthful heart be taught the worth Of those sweet hours so idly ofttimes run, How much of disappointment, woes, and cares, The heart, experience taught, might learn to shun! Could they but learn to garner up the gems Of kind monitions lavished on their minds By those who, by experience, know too well The value of each moment God has given, Those hours might then have more than joys to tell, And more than pleasure's pastimes to recount,— A catalogue of useful deeds instead Be on record, as landmarks of the past,— The fame of which might safely guide the feet Of others, toiling up the steep of time, And smooth the path, and save the wayward foot From thorns that ofttimes hedge the devious way. Ah, these are lessons we should bear in mind; For God requires this tribute at our hands,— The task of aiding others of our kind, With willing hearts, across life's desert sands.
