Page:Landon in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book 1836.pdf/13

Rh

Rh

Past that still hour, and its pale moon, The city is alive; It is the busy hour of noon, When man must seek and strive.

The pressure of our actual life Is on the waking brow; Labour and care, endurance, strife, These are around him now.

How wonderful the common street, Its tumult and its throng, The hurrying of the thousand feet That bear life's cares along.

How strongly is the present felt, With such a scene beside; All sounds in one vast murmur melt The thunder of the tide.

All hurry on—none pause to look Upon another’s face: The present is an open book None read, yet all must trace.

The poor man hurries on his race, His daily bread to find; The rich man has yet wearier chase, For pleasure’s hard to bind.

All hurry, though it is to pass For which they live so fast— What doth the present but amass, The wealth that makes the past.

The past is round us—those old spires That glimmer o’er our head; Not from the present is their fires, Their light is from the dead.

But for the past, the present’s powers Were waste of toil and mind; But for those long and glorious hours Which leave themselves behind.