The New era. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1865-1871, 1866-11-15


y have enjoyed the sofi1q of life
have endured thestoils Of its summer
have culled the fruits Of its autunt1l-
| am now passing through the rigors Of its
acinter.
And am neither forsalen of God,
Nor abandoned by nun,
see at no great distance the dawn of q
nelc daY,
The first of a spring that shall be eternal
Its advancing to meet me
run to embrace it
Welcomed welcome. eternal spring!
Hallelujah =.
My s. 1880
So wrote Adam Clark in the album of
a friend in Liverpool. His eventful life
was near its close. He had struggled
With poverty and against persecution:
he had regarded worldly pleasures as
phantasma and baubles, and had well
coined the hardslips of the itineracy as
salutary discipline. The poor boy at
Meybeg and the neglected and half
starved student at Kingswood had
become q great theologian at London
and Liverpool. He is reaping now, and
his eyes brighten as he beholds the en-
pansive harvest. He has written an
immortal work he has made himself
one Of the worlds benefactors, and has
Won an extensive and enduring fame.
He has received the reward of his hard
study and remarkable sacrifices. The
comforts Of life and the prospect of post
humous usefulness are his. He describes
heaven in the distance, and already
stands upon the steps that mount up to
celestial attitudes. He chances back upon
life, and pens these .jubilant lines.
II is midnight. BY his lamp alone
sits "the most celebrated Englishman
Of the nineteenth century," Wealth
and ancestral lonors, genius and un-
the historic places OF Continental Eu
rope, stood on the battlefield of Water
loo assembled the Handicapped SUBMITS
of Jura, and gathered poetic inspiration
from the fading grandeur of the old
cities Of Italy. He has written an epic,
wonderful in its fascination. grand in
its imagery. the most admired offspring
Of the modern Muse. He awoke one
morning and found himself unhappy.
He has lived a life of dissipation and
folly; he has treated Christianity as
trivial he has taken pride in penning
sentiments of bold impiety. In his most
brilliant productions his wretched iden-
tity appears; in the noblest flights of his
imagination are traces of his own I'M
ceasing woe. He even wished for in
sanity" for anything to quell memory,
the never-dying worm that fed on his
heart.o
What exile from himself can flee
To other zones, howe err remote
Still, still pursuing clings to me
The blightoflife, the demon-Thought"
The hand slowly passes the hour of
midnight. It is his thirty-third birth
day. He is pensive, and INDUCES in
hot u; Sc te
What is his own estimate of the value
of his life. Let him answer:
Through life's road, so dim and dirty
Life has dragged to three and thirty:
What have those years Icit to INC
Nothing Except thirty-thrcc.
Nothing? No. Nothing worthy of
an immortal being, bound to the bar of
God.
He writes in his Journal the epitaph
of the departed years
"Here lies
inferred in the Eternity
of the past
from whence there is no
Resurrection
for the days, whatever there may be
for the Dust
the THIRTY-THIRD YEAR
OF AN ILL-SPENT LIFE
which, after
Il lingering disease of many months,
sunk into lethargy
and expired
January %, 1921, A. d..
leaving a successor
inconsolablc
for the very loss which
occasioned its
Existence
Says Lord Bacon: Happy is he who
dies ere he calls for death to take him
away" (lori est .fellicis anteq,sana NOR
tenn Mrocat.) The brilliant poet died
young, but not before life had lost it's
attractions. The last song of his Tyre is
the wall of broken heart:
IF thou regret st thy youth. ,rhy Hre9
The land nt' honorable death
lshrre tip to the field and give
Away thy breath
Seek out les, otcn .nught than found
\ soldier grave ior thee the best;
Then 'n'l, around and choose the ground
And take thy rest
Md 10 it is. Man may di>credit revc-