Classic Poem

A YEAR , another year, is gone:
Time never stops: each day
He, the destroyer, hurries on,
And bears some spoil away.

What does he steal? youth's sparkling eye,
Its roseate cheek, and sunny hair,
Its bounding step of ecstacy, —
These are the trophies time must wear.

But can he touch the heavenly soul?
Alas! his icy fingers there
Usurp a withering control,
And scarce one glory spare.

But love still on the wreck survives,
The first to live, the last to die:
Amidst the waste it smiling lives,
And tells of immortality.