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Yerka, Jacek and Thomas Campbell - The River of Life
Identifier
014748
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The River of Life – Thomas Campbell
The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages
A day to childhood seems a year;
And years like passing ages.
The gladsome current of our youth
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders
But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?
When joys have lost their bloom and breath
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?
It may be strange – yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding
When one by one our friends have gone
And left our bosoms bleeding?
Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length
Proportioned to their sweetness