The River Time
by Benjamin Franklin Taylor
First published online on 2010 January 01.
SFFH: Article
Oh! a wonderful stream is the River Time,
As it runs through the realm of tears.
With a faultless rhythm, a musical rhyme,
And a broader sweep and a surge sublime,
As it blends with the ocean of years.
How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow
And the summers, like birds between,
And the years in the sheaf–how they come and how they go,
On the river’s breast, with its ebb and its flow,
As it glides in the shadow and sheen.
There’s a magical isle up the River Time,
Where the softest of airs are playing;
There’s a cloudless sky and a tropical clime
And a song as sweet as a vesper chime,
And the Junes with the roses are straying.
And the name of this isle is the Long Ago,
And we bury our treasures there;
There are brows of beauty, and bosoms of snow;
There are heaps of dust–oh, we loved them so!
There are trinkets and tresses of hair.
There are fragments of song that nobody sings,
There are parts of an infant’s prayer;
There’s a lute unswept, and a harp without strings;
There are broken vows, and pieces of rings,
And the garments our loved ones used to wear.
There are hands that are waved, when the fairy shore
By the mirage is lifted in air;
And we sometimes hear, through the turbulent roar,
Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before,
When the wind down the river was fair.
Oh, remembered for aye be that blessed isle,
All the day of our life till night;
And when the evening glows with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing in slumbers awhile,
May that Greenwood of souls be in sight!
1819-1897
Enjoy this story?
Here’s another you might like:
2006 June 28
“The song of our great immortality!”
Login 
Contains language, graphic violent or sexual descriptions or other
material some may find offensive.