Ode 613

O YOU embroidered robe of my young days,

How fast your silken pattern fades and frays;

Saving a dash of colour here and there,

Nothing remains to show me what you were.

Alas! that from Life's pleasant river brink

The water of life must some day surely shrink!

When we like withered rushes all are dead,

And life is an old dried-up river-bed.

It needs must be some day that thou and I

Bid family and friend a last good-bye,

Brother from brother part, and I from thee:

Such, by thy father's dust, is heaven's decree.

Only two little stars up near the pole

May keep together while the ages roll;

Asunder none may rend the Ferkédan—

Shining together since the world began.