Curiosities of Olden Times
I can't open it hard though I'm trying,
O what is it? what can it be?'
'Why, my dear, if you only look through it,
And stand with your face to the light;
Turn it gently (that's just how to do it!),
And you'll see a remarkable sight.'
'O how beautiful!' cried I, delighted,
As I saw each fantastic device,
The bright fragments now closely united,
All falling apart in a trice.
Times have passed, and new years will now find me,
Each birthday, no longer a boy,
Yet methinks that their turns may remind me
Of the turns of my grandmother's toy.
For in all this world, with its beauties,
Its pictures so bright and so fair,
You may vary the pleasures and duties
But still, the same pieces are there.
From the time that the earth was first founded,
There has never been anything new—
The same thoughts, the same things, have redounded
Till the colours have pall'd on the view.
But—though all that is old is returning,
There is yet in this sameness a change;
And new truths are the wise ever learning,
For the patterns must always be strange.
Shall we say that our days are all weary?
All labour, and sorrow, and care,
That its pleasures and joys are but dreary,
Mere phantoms that vanish in air?
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