Poems (Ford)/The Passing Days

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THE PASSING DAYS.
How swift and noiseless, on viewless pinions,  The sunny hours of life flit past; The priceless moments drift by as idly  As falling leaves in the autumn blast.
We turn aside from life's toils and duties  To mourn the hours forever gone; We let the present glide unheeded,  And sigh for days that may never dawn.
We vainly dream of some bright ideal,  Some Spirit-Eden of light and bloom, To draw the soul from the boundless real  That must await it beyond the tomb.
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He from whose breath leaps the passing ages,  Who bids them onward forever roll, Alone can answer the spirit-cravings  That ever spring in the deathless soul.
Oh, may we grasp at the fleeting moments,  And make each day, as He bids it come, A golden round in life's upward ladder,  To lift our footsteps the nearer home.
Life here should be a harmonious poem,  Whose breathing numbers could never die— A song of praise, on whose strains melodious  The soul might soar to its home on high.
If no harsh note mars its mellow music,  No jarring discord of hate or wrong Disturbs the flow of the magic numbers  That sweetly blend in that deathless song,—
Then, when our life-hymn at last is finished,  When sleeps the clay in its kindred sod, Rejoicing angels shall chant its anthem  Before the throne of the Author—God.
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