Lewistown gazette. [volume] (Lewistown, Pa.) 1843-1944, 1849-06-30
How Brief is Life.

uUn DIItI ID Illt'
The morning sun of life may gild a
! horizon unclouded by single care or un-
rufied by the prospect of reverses in our
common journey Nature may bloom in all
her heaven born beauty, and her glit,ering
| romance and brightest realities add zest
and loneliness to the new born life the be-
neficent hand of an all. wise Providence
may seem to strew the pathway with Ife's
! best offering to the solourner; but oil NAV
fade or vanish in an hour, and leave but a
lingering recollection with those who sur.
yiye, that Iife's brightest hopes are often
rested with those who fall the earliest be-
meath the fatal stroke Of our common de-.
stroyer. So is life. 1t blooms and with.
crs in a day-in a single hour its fondest
| antlcipaions are frustrated by the hand of
Him who holds our destinies subject 10
his will.
How brief is life is the involuntary
lamentation of doating parents as lovely
child, in whom is concentrated all that af.
fection can lavish or indulgence bestow,
yields its spotless spirit to the God that
gave il. The hopes and labors of that
brief life time are buried in the grave, and
the clay tenement, in which moved that
type of Heaven, is consigned to the dust
by the irreyocabla mandate of its giver.-
So is life; a work but half begun-a ten
der fragile flower, watered by tears and
nourished by incessant care, blooms but a
day TO wither in an hour.
How brief is life is the exclamation of
scarcely matured manhood, when all the
high hopes of future success and usefulness
or peradventure fame, are frustrated by the
hand Of death. Scarcely has childhood
made way for the years of maturity !;
scarcely has life began to yield what the
toll and study Of earlier days promised,
until it is palsied by disease and hurried
off by the last enemy Of man. How hard
to yield when thu hopes of youth seem
ready TO be lost in full fruition how hard
to obey the summons when it bids the set
ting sun of life ere it has reached its meri.
dinn. So is life it blooms but dav and
withers in an hour.
How brief is life almost unconsciously
falls from the lips of one in the MONDAY of
lie. as he revolts from the icy grasp of
death. lie scarce began to live, vet
score and ten have ileeted past him, and
time has already marked the ravages of care
and dsappointments on his brow. The ex-
travagaut hopes of earlier days have never
been realized; theyhad vanished beneath the
realities OF life as the morning dew beneath
the rays of the sun he has long since
learned that sorrows and unexpected NOR.
tificatons must find place in each ones
cup but he clings to the breaking thread
to glance at the past. 1t breaks upon him
like fleeing vision. Ii seems but the
work of day it withers in an hour.
How brief is life is heard from him
who has braved his three score and ten.- -
The sunken eye, the furTowed cheek, the
pasied limbs, the racked and feeble consti.
tuition, all tell he has withstood the storms
of many winters, that he has seen life in
its saddest hours, its brightest smiles, yet
he shrinks from dissolution TO pause a mo-
ment aud contemplate the dreamy fiction
presented by a retrospective glance. He
has done his work he has filled the time
allotted to mortnls; yet ii seems but the
work of day, and wiIhers in an hour
How brief is life may be heard from
the quiyering lips of him who has filled the
measure of century and shared more than
the ordinary calamites of our journey
That form once foil Of all the yigor and
freshness of youth-once doating in infan.
cy, now doating in age--has stood like The
sturdy oak in the forest blast when destruc.
ton fell around it on every side, yet it
sinks 10 death with The reluctance of Wig.
orous mind, and sees the past as but q
dream cbequered fancy. So is life
1t seems still but the work of day--it
withers in an hour.-Kelly.
Al r,,, g, e,o,nr Jou,p Jooty m IN