And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;
Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"Passing away! passing away!"
While I gazed at that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought or care stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,
Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.
The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush
Had something lost of its brilliant blush;
And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels,
That marched so calmly round above her,
Was a little dimmed,--as when evening steals
Upon noon's hot face. Yet one couldn't but love her,
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;
And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say,
"Passing away! passing away!"
While yet I looked, what a change there came!
Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan;
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet just as busily swung she on;
The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust:
The hands, that over the dial swept,
Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept
And still there came that silver tone
From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone
(Let me never forget till my dying day
The tone or the burden of her lay),
"Passing away! passing away!"
JOHN PIERPONT.
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