Classic Poem

How silently yon streamlet slides
From out the twilight-shaded bowers!
How, soft as sleep, it onward glides
In sunshine through its dreaming flowers.

That tranquil wave, now turn'd to gold
Beneath the slowly westering sun,
It is the same, far on the wold,
Whose foam this morn we gazed upon.

The leaden sky, the barren waste,
The torrent we this morning knew,
How changed are all! as now we haste
To bid them, with the day, adieu!

Ah! thus should life and love at last
Grow bright and sweet when death is near:
May we, our course of trial pass'd,
Thus bathed in beauty glide from here!