The Fountain Light &quot; 151 



&quot; The Fountain Light of All Our Day &quot; 



YESTERDAY was a day of foreboding 

 fate. As one in the fields has heard from 

 the distant town one slow and solemn toll, 

 and then an echoing silence long succeeding be 

 fore the bell begins its solemn record of the dead, 

 so was it in that short morning hour when upon 

 the intolerable blazing sunshine fell a sudden 

 cloud, and a slight chill wind breathed upon earth, 

 and the sky grew overcast ; in that moment 

 sounded the warning stroke of the year s decline. 

 The prophetic pause is sooner or later, one year 

 and another, but it always comes, and it remains 

 in memory, like as the lingering echo from the 

 village belfry, until the note is struck again, and 

 the summer is indeed gone. 



There is a poem that by some strange hap 

 strayed into the hymn-books which has these 

 musical lines, as we remember them : 

 u Sweet Sabbath of the year, 



While earthly lights decay, 

 Thy parting steps methinks I hear 

 Pass from the world away.&quot; 



