SWEET, happy, cherished childhood hours!How bright and beautiful thy goldenMoments are! How glorious seems the sunlightOf thy sky! Each morning's silvery dawnIs brief with love, and guileless innocenceAdorns each day. Thine is an era ofBrief purity; and sinless hearts uponThy altar place their offerings of delightAnd present joy.No pangs of doubt, or pride, or hatred riseTo crush the trusting heart of innocence.No dark remorse a spiteful entrance findsWithin the placid bosom of a child,Where confidence and love and truth reposeAs naturally as perfume in the rose.But, oh, how brief the stay! how transient allThe bliss! Like a fair meteor in an easternSky, that shines along a lovely garden way,Revealing, by its brilliant, shimmering light,The glorious beauty of the opening scene,Where fairy music melts upon the ear,And flowers and birds and fields and limpidStreams in paradisic beauty richly glow.Thus comest thou, sweet, happy childhood hours,With only one bright season in a life,—One little nebula upon the sky of time,On which the eye may turn in after years,And, by the aid of memory, trace the starsOf uncorroded pleasure clustering there.Ah, could the youthful heart be taught the worthOf those sweet hours so idly ofttimes run,How much of disappointment, woes, and cares,The heart, experience taught, might learn to shun!Could they but learn to garner up the gemsOf kind monitions lavished on their mindsBy those who, by experience, know too wellThe value of each moment God has given,Those hours might then have more than joys to tell,And more than pleasure's pastimes to recount,—A catalogue of useful deeds insteadBe on record, as landmarks of the past,—The fame of which might safely guide the feetOf others, toiling up the steep of time,And smooth the path, and save the wayward footFrom thorns that ofttimes hedge the devious way.Ah, these are lessons we should bear in mind;For God requires this tribute at our hands,—The task of aiding others of our kind,With willing hearts, across life's desert sands.
