Spring: Saturday Evening Poem by John Bowring

Hours, days, weeks,-so our life-time flows-
Gently, as melt the vernal snows
Beneath the sun; they pass away,
Like dew-drops in the eye of day,
One by one-till all are gone:-
The mists disperse-the twilight's o'er,
And the monarch bursts from the orient door,
And the clouds impede his march no more.


Such is the fate of man! and so
His night of life rolls by,-the wave
Of darkness sweeps across his grave-
Then o'er the gloomy hills of snow,
That seem life's boundary-brighter suns
Emerge in glory-suns immortal-
Bursting thro' the deep tomb's portal-
And the tide of being runs
In living light-eternal-bright,
While everlasting ages flow.


Why should the grave be terrible?
Why should it be a word of fear,
Jarring upon the mortal ear?
There repose and silence dwell:-
The living hear the funeral knell,
But the dead no funeral knell can hear.
Does the gay flower scorn the grave? the dew
Forget to kiss its turf? the stream
Refuse to bathe it? or the beam
Of moonlight shun the narrow bed,
Where the tired pilgrim rests his head?
No! the moon is there, and smiling too!
And the sweetest song of the morning bird
Is oft in that ancient yew-tree heard;
And there may you see the harebell blue
Bending its light form-gently-proudly,
And listen to the fresh winds, loudly
Playing around yon sod, as gay
As if it were a holiday,
And children freed from durance they.
But 'tis the kingdom of decay!
So is the world-and all we see,
The sport of mutability.
Think ye the mountains never change,
Nor the vast ocean?
There's not an hour-but swift, and strange,
And secret workings-the commotion
Of all the elements goes on;-
There's not a spark of yonder sun,
Which does not perish at its birth;
For life itself is but the child
Of death-and this life-giving earth
Is dissolution's parent mild.
Death is the gate thro' which we come
Into the world-and every day
We die-and when dissolved away,
'Tis death conducts us to our home.
Death hath no terrors-while we are,
Death is not-when we cease to be,
Then death begins. Eternity
Is life,-not death. What cause for fear
Of death-when this same death we dread,
Is life continuous, and to die
Is but to live immortally?
Here, every, every step we tread,
Is on a grave-and every breath
Heaved, is a messenger of death.


'Tis well. If life have a joy worth giving,
'Tis not the fragile joy of living,
Except as it leads us to the door
Where life's delusions cheat no more:
They will soon be over-and then, O then,
Rapture 'twill be to live again,
Where man in his glory shall inherit
What's brightest and best of his earthly spirit;
And blend-and not in a perishing hour-
Beauty and wisdom, and light and power.