THE DAY IS DONE. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, Such songs have power to quiet Then read from the treasured volume And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, 47 THE ARROW AND THE SONG. I SHOT an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where; I breathed a song into the air, Long, long afterward, in an oak THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais toujours!" JACQUES BRIDAINE. OMEWHAT back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw, And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all, — 66 Forever-never! Never forever!" Half-way up the stairs it stands, With sorrowful voice to all who pass, Never -forever!" By day its voice is low and light; Never-forever!" Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, In that mansion used to be His great fires up the chimney roared; There groups of merry children played, Those hours the ancient timepiece told, – "Forever never! Never-forever!" From that chamber, clothed in white, There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; THE EVENING STAR. And in the hush that followed the prayer, All are scattered now and fled, Never-forever!" Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly, 51 THE EVENING STAR. Low in the painted oriel of the West, Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines, Like a fair lady at her casement, shines Of all her radiant garments, and reclines My morning and my evening star of love! |