Classic Poem

As run the rivers on through shade and sun,
As flow the hours of time through day and night,
As through her swelling year the earth rolls on,
Each part in alternation dark and light:
So rolls and flows with more prodigious change
The human destiny; in gloom profound
And horror of great darkness, or made strange
By sudden light that shines from heaven around:
Now in it works a fate inopportune,
Deadly, malicious; now the mortal scene
Smiles comforted with some eternal boon,
And blood is turned to dew of roseate sheen:
But whether weal or woe, life onward flows:
Whither, oh, whither? Not an angel knows.