Alas how poor and little worth

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Alas how poor and little worth

Author: Henry W. Longfellow
Published in 28 hymnals

Representative Text

1 Alas! how poor and little worth
Are all those glittering toys of earth
That lure us here!
Dreams of a sleep that death must break;
Alas! before it bids us wake,
They disappear.

2 Where is the strength that spurned decay,
The step that rolled so light and gay,
The heart's blithe tone?
The strength is gone, the step is slow,
And joy grows weariness and woe
When age comes on.

3 Our birth is but a starting-place;
Life is the running of the race,
And death the goal:
There all those glittering toys are brought;
That path alone, of all unsought,
Is found of all.

4 Oh let the soul its slumbers break,
Arouse its senses, and awake
To see how soon
Life, like its glories, glides away,
And the stern footsteps of decay
Come stealing on.

Source: The Book of Worship #420

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Author: Henry W. Longfellow

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth , D.C.L. was born at Portland, Maine, Feb. 27, 1807, and graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825. After residing in Europe for four years to qualify for the Chair of Modern Languages in that College, he entered upon the duties of the same. In 1835 he removed to Harvard, on his election as Professor of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres. He retained that Professorship to 1854. His literary reputation is great, and his writings are numerous and well known. His poems, many of which are as household words in all English-speaking countries, display much learning and great poetic power. A few of these poems and portions of others have come into common use as hymns, but a hymn-writer in the strict sense of that term he… Go to person page >

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