Before the Great New Year

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 21, 1882

Before the Great New Year

The last wan petals leave the rose, The latest swallows preen for flight, The summer's gone where no one knows, With dead men's love, and spent years' light, And warm hearts buried out of sight.

Cling to the flying hours; and yet Let one pure hope, one great desire, Like song on dying lips, be set, That 'ere we fall in scattered fire Our hearts may lift the world's heart higher.

Here in the autumn months of Time, Before the great new year can break, Some little way our feet should climb, Some little mark our words should make For liberty and manhood's sake!