Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

282
THE ATTEMPT
% m fear.
Oh! dying year,
How many hopes, once rosy as the flowers
That crowned with fragrant wreaths thy spring’s young hours,
Lie withered on thy bier.
Still those, who fain
Had followed vanished footsteps, gone before,
Stand lorn and stranded, on time’s barren shore,
Calling their lost in vain.
Oh ! human mirth,
And love, and hope, how were your sweetness fraught
With a despairing sadness, could we not
Look up above our earth.
So fades our life,
Even as a blossom sheds its tender grace;
Oh Thou ! our only sure abiding place
Through earthly change and strife,
The Strength and Stay
Of our mortality ! upon t]ie eyes
Weary with weeping, let Thy light arise,—
Erelong life’s dreary day
Fades and is o’er,
And earth’s poor pilgrims, through the open gate
Pass with glad feet, no longer desolate,
Where time shall be no more.
J. I. L.