Page:Poems Curwen.djvu/129

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
the year of jubilee.
121

The Year of Jubilee.
A RETROSPECT.

Old Time has rung the curtain down
On the departed year,
With Nature's sympathetic face
Bent on its rain-drenched bier.

Ah, me! how swift its days have flown,
With all their hopes and fears;
Now days, weeks, months, are garnered in
The great storehouse of years.

They lie upon its threshing floor,
With all their good and ill,
Awaiting their appointed hour
For passing thro' God's mill.

Oh! 'tis a strange soul-stirring thought,
What if we've lived in vain?
What, if in sifting sheaves of ours,
God finds no golden grain.

For eighteen hundred ninety-seven?
Thank heav'n 'tis not too late;
New fields of labour wait for all
In eighteen ninety-eight.

Fresh opportunities are given
To each to start anew;
But here we think of future days,
Let us the past review.