KEEP OUT OF THE PAST.

Keep out of the Past! for its highways

Are damp with malarial gloom;

Its gardens are sere and its forests are drear.

And everywhere molders a tomb.

Who seeks to regain its lost pleasures,

Finds only a rose turned to dust;

And its storehouse of wonderful treasures

Are covered and coated with rust.

Keep out of the Past. It is haunted:

He who in its avenues gropes,

Shall find there the ghost of a joy prized the most,

And a skeleton throng of dead hopes.

In place of its beautiful rivers,

Are pools that are stagnant with slime;

And these graves gleaming in a phosphoric light,

Hide dreams that were slain in their prime.

Keep out of the Past. It is lonely,

And barren and bleak to the view;

Its fires have grown cold, and its stories are old —

Turn, turn to the Present — the New:

To-day leads you up to the hilltops

That are kissed by the radiant sun,

To-day shows no tomb, life’ s hopes are in bloom,

And to-day holds a prize to be won.