How silently the years in long procession,
Come gliding down the corridors of Time to us!
O quietly they come and take possesion
Of our dear youth, and weigh us with oppression;
How great they seem, and how sublime to us!

How softly Love into the heart comes creeping!
How wonderfully low is her command to us!
She wakes the soul that ertswhile lay a-sleeping,
She dries the tears that were but lately weeping,
Revealing all her Promised Land to us.

And Death! O with a velvet tread she finds us,
And teaches us her awful lore and mystery;
Like sheaves of wheat are we what time she binds us,
And in a little sheet of whiteness winds us--
And this is all of our poor history!

O we who loudly cry our names in chorus
Across the mighty years, shall sooner, later,
Go humbly back upon the tide that bore us
To this brief life, as men have gone before us,
Softly to God, silent to our Creator!