Young Joy ne'er thought of counting hours, Till Care, one summer's morning, Set up, among his smiling flowers, A dial, by way of warning. But Joy loved better to gaze on the sun, As long as its light was glowing, Than to watch with old Care how the shadows stole on, And how fast that light was going. So fill the cup--what is it to us How Time his circle measures? The fairy hours we call up thus, Obey no wand but Pleasure's.
Sail on, sail on, thou fearless bark-- Wherever blows the welcome wind, It cannot lead to scenes more dark, More sad than those we leave behind. Each wave that passes seems to say, "Tho' death beneath our smile may be, Less cold we are, less false than they, Whose smiling wrecked thy hopes and thee." Sail on, sail on,--thro' endless space-- Thro' calm--thro' tempest--stop no more: The stormiest sea's a resting place To him who leaves such hearts on shore. Or--if some desert land we meet, Where never yet false-hearted men Profaned a world, that else were sweet,-- Then rest thee, bark, but not till then.
Yes, sad one of Sion,[1] if closely resembling, In shame and in sorrow, thy withered-up heart-- If drinking deep, deep, of the same "cup of trembling" Could make us thy children, our parent thou art,
Like thee doth our nation lie conquered and broken, And fallen from her head is the once royal crown; In her streets, in her halls, Desolation hath spoken, And "while it is day yet, her sun hath gone down."[2]
Like thine doth her exile, mid dreams of returning, Die far from the home it were life to behold; Like thine do her sons, in the day of their mourning, Remember the bright things that blest them of old.
Ah, well may we call her, like thee "the Forsaken,"[3] Her boldest are vanquished, her proudest are slaves; And the harps of her minstrels, when gayest they waken, Have tones mid their mirth like the wind over graves!
Yet hadst thou thy vengeance--yet came there the morrow, That shines out, at last, on the longest dark night, When the sceptre, that smote thee with slavery and sorrow, Was shivered at once, like a reed, in thy sight.
When that cup, which for others the proud Golden City[4] Had brimmed full of bitterness, drenched her own lips; And the world she had trampled on heard, without pity, The howl in her halls, and the cry from her ships.