Time will change the fairest flower,
Time will change the gayest bower,
Time will waste the giant oak,
Time will end all human hope.
Time the palace walls erases,
Time the fairest scenes defaces,
Time will change the monarch’s crown,
And lay all his glory down.
Time will change the golden hair,
Time the hardest marble wear,
Time will change the brightest dye,
Steal the light from beauty’s eye,
Stop the sweetest birds that sing,
Change the charms of rosy spring.
Time will change the sylvan grove,
But time cannot alter love.
Time will change all things beside,
Yet the stream of love will glide,
Till the eye is closed in death,
And the fond heart laid beneath.
When the ties of earth are riven,
Love lives on afresh in Heaven.
When the spirit hence has fled,
And the heart is cold and dead—
Then in some Arcadian grove
We shall live again in love.
Time may change and life may flee,
Yet the heart that beats for thee
Shall as fondly round thee twine,
And each throb respond to thine,
Till the sun of life has set,
Nor e’en then can we forget.
Like yon star that marks the Pole,
The re-animated soul
Lives of love again to dream:
Love shall then be all the theme.
Lovers here may droop and die,
Yet will blossom in the sky,
By no jealousy distrest,
Where no rival can molest.
Let the world say what it will,
Love shall live and flourish still.
The above was composed in his younger days by Edward Faragher, Ned Beg Hom Ruy.
(source A Manx Notebook)
