VANITAS VANITATEM.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XIV, Issue 73, 8 December 1855, Page 3

VANITAS VANITATEM.

[The Glasgow Free Press publishes this as an original poem, by Gerald Griffin, which has hitherto slumbered m obscurity. It certainly displays much of the character of Grfffin's pious, plaintive muse : — ] The stream that hurries by your fixed shore Returns no more ; The wind that dries at morn yon dewy lawn Breathes and is gone ; Those withered flowers to summer's ripening glow No more shall blow ; Those, fallen leaves that strew yon garden bed For aye are dead ; Gn shore, or sea, or hill, or vale, or plain, Nought shall remain ; Vainly for sunshine fled, and joys gone by, We heave a 6igh ; On, ever on, with unexhausted breath Time hastes to death ; Even with each word we Bpcak a moment ilies, Is born and dies ; Of all for which poor mortals vainly mourn Naught shall return ; Lifo'hath its home m heaven and earth beneath — • And so hath death ; ' Not all the chains that clank m eastern clime Can fetter time ; For all the phials m the doctor's store Youth comes no more : No drugs on age's wrinkled cheek renew Life's early hue ; Not all the tears by pious mourners shed Can wake the dead ; If thus through lesser nature's empire wideNothing abide. If wind, and wave, and leaf, and sun, and flower, Have all their hour ; He walks on ice whose dallying spirit clings To earthly things ; And he alone is wise whose well-taught loveIs fixed above ; Truths firm and bright but oft to mortal ear Chilling and drear ; Harsh as the raven's croak the sounds that tell Of pleasure's knell ; Pray, reader, that the minstrel's strain Not all be vain ; And when thou bend'st to God the suppliant knee Remember me. G. G.