When, one by one, the stately, silent Years
Glide like pale ghosts beyond our yearning sight,
Vainly we stretch our arms to stay their flight,
So soon, so swift they pass to endless night!
We hardly learn to name them,
To praise them or to blame them,
To know their shadowy faces,
Ere we see their empty places!
Only once the glad Spring greets them;
Only once fair Summer meets them;
Only once the Autumn glory
Tells for them its mystic story;
Only once the Winter hoary
Weaves for them its robes of light!
Years leave their work half-done; like men, alas!
With sheaves ungathered to their graves they pass,
And are forgotten. What they strive to do
Lives for a while in memory of a few;
Then over all Oblivion’s waters flow—
The Years are buried in the long ago!
But when a Century dies, what room is there for tears?
Rather in solemn exaltation let us come,
With roll of drum
(Not muffled as in woe),
With blare of bugles, and the liquid flow
Of silver clarions, and the long appeal
Of the clear trumpets ringing peal on peal;
With clash of bells, and hosts in proud array,
To pay meet homage to its burial day!
For its proud work is done. Its name is writ
Where all the ages that come after it
Shall read the eternal letters, blazoned high
On the blue dome of the impartial sky.
What ruthless fate can darken its renown,
Or dim the lustre of its starry crown?
On mountain-peaks of Time each Century stands alone;
And each, for glory or for shame, hath reaped what it hath sown!