Poems (Ford)/Long Ago

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LONG AGO.
Oh, days of life's glad spring-time,  How quickly ye glide by,How soon dark clouds sweep over  Your morning's rosy sky;Bright waves of Time's broad river,  Too swiftly do ye flowWith ceaseless motion ever  Down to the long ago.
And do our days drift idly  Like sunbeams o'er the tide,Leaving no trace behind them  Upon Time's ocean wide?Or are they richly freighted,  As from our sight they flow,With treasures for the future,  Won from the long ago?
Or, as they melt in foam-wreaths  To ebb and flow no more,Where golden sands are gleaming  On the eternal shore, ​Must their last breath be wearied  With sighs of bitter woeFor bright hopes dead and buried  Down in the long ago?
Alas! bright days, too early  Goes down your noonday sun;The night of death enshrouds us  Before our work is done;And many a path is thorny  Where roses now might blow,Had we not idly wasted  The days of long ago.
Like scentless, withered flowers  Upon a streamlet cast,Do aimless lives drift downward  And sink into the past;They leave no vacant places,  For them no tear-drops flow,—They pass unknown, forgotten,  Down to the long ago.
Then, as our days are passing,  And we are passing too,Let earth's vain joys hide never  That bright land from our viewWhere from the bounteous Giver  All happiness shall flow,And grief and death come never  As in the long ago.
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