The Course of Life

The Course of Life

Oh! let the soul its slumber break,
Arouse its senses and awake,

To see how soon

Life, with its glories, glides away,
And the stern footsteps of decay,

Comes stealing on.

How pleasure, like the passing wind,
Blows by, and leaves us nought behind

But grief at last;

How still our present happiness
Seems, to the wayward fancy, less

Than what is past.

And, while we eye the rolling tide,
Down which our flying minutes glide

Away so fast;

Let us the present hour employ,
And dream each future dream of joy

Already past.

Let no vain hope deceive the mind -
No, happier, let us hope to find

To-morrow than to-day.

Our gilded dreams of yore were bright,
Like them the present shall delight -

Like them decay.

Our lives like hasting streams must be,
That into one engulfing sea

Are doomed to fall;

The Sea of Death whose waves roll on,
O'er king and kingdom, crown and throne,

And swallow all.

Alike the river's lordly tide,
Alike the humble riv'lets glide

To that sad wave:

Death levels poverty and pride,
And rich and poor sleep side by side

Within the grave.

Our birth is but a starting place,
Life is the running of the race,

And death the goal;

There all our steps at last are brought,
That path alone, of all unsought,

Is found of all.

Long ere the damps of death can blight,
The cheek's pure glow of red and white

Hath passed away:

Youth smiled, and all was heavenly fair;
Age came, and laid his finger there,

And where are they?

Where are the strength that mocked decay,
The step that rose so light and gay,

The heart's blithe tone? -

The strength is gone, the step is slow,
And joy grows weariness and wo

When age comes on.

Say, then, how poor and little worth
Are all those glittering toys of earth

That lure us here;

Dreams of sleep that death must break,
Alas! before it bids us wake,

Ye disappear.

Jorge Manrique

New Series 2:2, p. 8

1841.03.13

(Translated from a beautiful Spanish Poem, by Jorge Manrique, on the death of his father, quoted in the thirty-ninth volume of the Edinburgh Review.)