Planted on the banks of time

The continuity of life 

is never broken; 

the river flows onward 

and is lost to our sight, 

but under its new horizon 

it carries the same waters 

which it gathered under ours; 

and its unseen valleys 

are made glad by the offerings 

which are borne down to them 

from the Past, flowers, perchance, 

the germs of which its own waves 

had planted on the banks of Time. 

-- John Greenleaf Whittier