Songs 8

¹Few are thy days, and full of woe,

O man, of woman born!

Thy doom is written, “Dust thou art,

and shalt to dust return.”

²Behold the emblem of thy state

in flow’rs that bloom and die,

Or in the shadow’s fleeting form,

that mocks the gazer’s eye.

³Guilty and frail, how shalt thou stand

before thy sov’reign Lord?

Can troubled and polluted springs

a hallow’d stream afford?

⁴Determin’d are the days that fly

successive o’er thy head;

The number’d hour is on the wing

that lays thee with the dead.

⁵Great God! afflict not in thy wrath

the short allotted span,

That bounds the few and weary days

of pilgrimage to man.

⁶All nature dies, and lives again:

the flow’r that paints the field,

The trees that crown the mountain’s brow,

and boughs and blossoms yield,

⁷Resign the honours of their form

at Winter’s stormy blast,

And leave the naked leafless plain

a desolated waste.

⁸Yet soon reviving plants and flow’rs

anew shall deck the plain;

The woods shall hear the voice of Spring,

and flourish green again.

⁹But man forsakes this earthly scene,

ah! never to return:

Shall any foll’wing spring revive

the ashes of the urn?

¹⁰The mighty flood that rolls along

its torrents to the main,

Can ne’er recall its waters lost

from that abyss again.

¹¹So days, and years, and ages past,

descending down to night,

Can henceforth never more return

back to the gates of light;

¹²And man, when laid in lonesome grave,

shall sleep in Death’s dark gloom,

Until th’ eternal morning wake

the slumbers of the tomb.

¹³O may the grave become to me

the bed of peaceful rest,

Whence I shall gladly rise at length,

and mingle with the blest!

¹⁴Cheer’d by this hope, with patient mind,

I’ll wait Heav’n’s high decree,

Till the appointed period come,

when death shall set me free.