Not for this alone I love thee, Nor because thy waves of blue From celestial seas above thee Take their own celestial hue. Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee, Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, More than this; - thy name reminds me Friends my soul with joy remembers! On the hearthstone of my heart! 'Tis for this, thou Silent River! THE DAY IS DONE THE day is done, and the darkness I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, A feeling of sadness and longing, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Not from the grand old masters. Not from the bards sublime, 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 And the night shall be filled with music, 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 CURFEW I SOLEMNLY, mournfully, Is beginning to toll. Cover the embers, And put out the light; Dark grow the windows, No voice in the chambers, Reign over all! II The book is completed, And closed, like the day; And the hand that has written it Dim grow its fancies; Forgotten they lie; Like coals in the ashes, They darken and die. Song sinks into silence, The story is told, The windows are darkened, The hearth-stone is cold. Darker and darker The black shadows fall; Sleep and oblivion Reign over all. 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 BRIDdaine. SOMEWHAT back from the village street Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; An ancient timepiece says to all, Never forever!" Half-way up the stairs it stands, And points and beckons with its hands Like a monk, who, under his cloak, With sorrowful voice to all who pass, By day its voice is low and light; Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, It calmly repeats those words of awe,"Forever never! His great fires up the chimney roared; Never forever!" There groups of merry children played, There youths and maidens dreaming strayed O precious hours! O golden prime, And affluence of love and time! Even as a miser counts his gold, Those hours the ancient timepiece told, – From that chamber, clothed in white, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; And in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair, All are scattered now and fled, Never - forever!" Never here, for ever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear, |