Appreciating The Accomplishments Of Past Generations

I see the years like billows break
Upon the passive strand of time,
And as they break, sweep off in turn
Man's works of every age and clime.
Who, what am I amid the wreck
Of all this beauty, love, and power,
O'er which I weep, but whose decay
I cannot hinder for an hour?
The true is never obsolete,
The never old is never stale;
I guard the gold of ancient mines,
And gather gems, though few and pale;
I call them fair - as fair as when
They dropped from God's bright heaven for men.
(Horatius Bonar, "The Silence Of Faith", Hymns Of The Nativity [London, England: James Nisbet & Co., 1879], 53)