The Knickerbocker Gallery/Antique Dirge
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R. H. Stoddard.
Antique Dirge.
By R. H. Stoddard.
We are bent with age and cares,In the last of our gray hairs,And we lean upon our staffs,Looking for the epitaphs;For we are the last, the last,In the ruins of the Past!
When our youth was in its prime,Then it was a merry time;Suns were golden, stars were bright,And the moon was a delight!And we wandered in its beams,In the sweetest, sweetest dreams!Now our dreams are fled,For the happy Past is dead,And we feel it lived in vain,And will never come again!No! 't is gone! and gone each traceOf its once familiar face:Even the dust to which we yearnLost, and lost its very urn!Nothing remains except its tomb; (The earth, and heaven so draped with clouds!)And we who wander in its gloom, And soon will need our shrouds,So pale are we, and so aghast,At the absence of the Past!
We had friends when we were young, And we shared their smiles and tears:But they are for ever flown;We can only weep alone In the shadow of the years!Roses come again with spring; (We are standing on the tomb, But beneath our feet they bloom!)And the summer birds do sing!But the dead, who loved them so,They are in the winter snow;Far from birds, and far from flowers,And this weary life of ours!All is over! Naught remains,Save the memory of our pains,And the years that bear us fastTo the silence of the Past!