Reflections on the Spending of Time

The summer is ended and gone,
How swift have the months flown away!
So swift I scarce have had time to look on,
And the incidents note of each passing day.

Continual employment gives time his wings,
While busy we heed not his flight;
Not so with the idler, he saunters and sings,
And she is too long for him; and the night

Affords him no pleasure, his sleep is unsound,
He does nothing to purchase its sweets,
Like the drone he seldom in employment is found,
Though he feeds on the daintiest of meats.

But what of the idler and what of the drone,
And what of the busiest of men,
The summer, as I first observed, is gone,
And will never return again.

And though others may come in its room,
And in turn recede from the stage,
Yet we, though disease should not be our doom,
Must soon take our departure by age,

What now most concerns us is, to look back and view,
See how we have spent or misspent the hours,—
See whether we have done all the good we could do,
And eschewed all evil that lay in our power.

Can our hearts but respond to the truth of the position,
In peace we may he down to rest,
Yea, happy in time will be our condition,
And in the end we may hope to be blest.