And time past on—the bright and brief,
I led the dance and song,
As careless as the summer leaf
The wild wind bears along.
But the wind fails the leaf at last,
And down it sinks to die,
To perish with the perished past,
And gone as idly by.
So sink the spirits of those days,
That buoyant bore us on;
The joy declines, the hope decays
Ere we believe them gone.
Then memory rises like a ghost,
Whose presence brings to mind
The better things which we have lost,
The hopes we've left behind.
And what could memory bring to me
But sorrow, shame, and sin;
And wretched the worn heart must be,
With such dark guests within.
I said, accursed be a life
That mid such ills hath birth;
Where fate and nature in their strife,
Make desolate the earth.
