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THE GENTLE STUDENT.*[1]
Bend, gentle student, o'er the page,
Although thine be a joyous age—
An age, when hope lifts up its eyes,
And sees but summer in the skies;
And youth leads on its sunny hours,
Like painted ones, whose links are flowers.
Yet bend thy sweet and earnest look
Above that old and holy book.
For there will come another time,
When hope will need a faith sublime,
To lead it on the thorny path
That weary mortal ever hath.
When vain delights have left behind
A fevered and exhausted mind,
And life, with few and wasted years,
Treads mournfully its vale of tears.
- ↑
* Vide the Frontispiece.
