THE BROOK AND THE OCEAN

A bubbling brook on a summer day,

singing merrily on its way;

Calm and serene, I watched it go

Like the years glide on their onward flow.

The years passed swiftly, too swiftly it seems,

For now I'm old and I've had my dreams;

Yet some of them have come to naught,

Like the surface of stones the water has wrought

In the strangest ways, so my life has been.

And like the brook, I must still go on

'Till I come to the source from whence

I started-life and I.

But life and death go together, Like the brook meets the ocean forever and ever.

By Maude Elinor Bowers Van Order (My Great Grandmother).