CVi. PROLEGOMENA. 



of youth ; manhood soon succeeds, a^e declines, 

 tottering senility approaches, death comes ! 

 Every stroke of the clock, every fall of the leaf, 

 every circle of the year, is but a memento of a 

 changing state of things never at rest, and 

 ending to an end. In the hourglass of mortality 

 is a ceaseless current, and the lamp of life, how- 

 ever careful we may be to husband or replenish 

 its oil, is gradually burning out : it may be ex- 

 tinguished to night, or it may last till to morrow, 

 but it must be extinguished. Let us, therefore, 

 make sure of our port while we have light at the 

 helm, and steer hard after the courses of the 

 saints, lest, loosing both our compass and our 

 pilots, we should be forced to anchor on unsafe 

 ground, and when the adverse winds blow, should 

 lurch to larboard, and find ourselves lost in a 

 lake of unquenchable fire. Thus I close the 

 introduction to the Poetry of this volume, hoping 

 that the principles thereof, which are sound and 

 irrefragable, however humble my means of re- 

 commending them, may continue to operate on the 

 hearts of the young reader, and grow up there- 

 with ; when the writer, now old, shall no longer 

 scuttle before the light and varying breezes ot 

 this chequered life : for the bark of existence 

 once afloat, must go forward to its object, and 

 carry man to the End of Man. Omnes eodem 

 coqimur, omnium Versatur urna serius ocyus, 



