Human Life

Sad is our youth, for it is ever going, Crumbling away beneath our very feet; Sad is our life, for onward it is flowing, In current unperceived because so fleet; Sad are our hopes, for they were sweet in sowing, But tares, self-sown, have overtopped the wheat; Sad are our joys, for they were sweet in blowing; And still, O still, their dying breath is sweet; And sweet is youth, although it hath bereft us Of that which made our childhood sweeter still; And sweeter our life’s decline, for it hath left us A nearer Good to cure an older Ill; And sweet are all things, when we learn to prize them Not for their sake, but His who grants them or denies them.