THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse des deux mot element, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours: jamais. Jamais toujours JACQUES BRIDAINE]
SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stan is the old-fashioned country-seat;
Across its antique portico
Tal poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hail
An ancient timepiece says to all,
"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"
Halfway up the stairs it stands,
Ari points and beckons with its hands
Fruita case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crases himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,—
"For ever--Dever!
Never-for ever!"
By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Instinct as a passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along the vacant hail,
At the ceiling, along the floor,
But, Eke the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased, —
For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"
There groups of merry chüdren played, There youths and maidens Creaming strayed;
O precious hours! O giden prime,
An anence of love and time
Even as a miser courts Lis guid
Those hours the ancient timepiece said,-
For ever-ever!
Never-for ever
From that chamber, clothed in vite
The brade came forth on her wedding light;
There, in that shert room below,
The dead lay in his stroud of BLOW:
And in the Lual that followed the prayer,
Was beard the ad rice on the sit-
For ever-DEVET
Never-for ever!"
And seems to say at each chamber-door,-All are scattered now and fied,
**For ever-Dever!
Never-for ever!"
Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, Through every swift vicissitude
Of changefal time, unchanged it has
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
Italy repeats those words of awe,-
"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"
In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great ires up the chimney roared ;
The stranger feasted at his board;
Some are married, some are dead: And when I ask, with trots of pat **Ah: when shall they all meet aga As in the days long sua rone by, The ancient timepiece makes rejLI,"For ever-Deter
Kever-for ever!"
Never bere, for ever there.
Where all parting pain and are
And death and the
For ever there, but never here :
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incESSELLY.
**For ever-Deter
Never-for ever
THOU Comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain,
With banners, by great gales incessant fanned,
Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand,
And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!
Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,*
Upon thy bridge of gold; thy royal hand
Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land,
Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain.
Thy shield is the red harvest moon suspended
So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves;
Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;
Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;
And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,
Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves!
How many lives, made beautiful and sweet
By self-devotion and by self-restraint,
Whose pleasure is to run without complaint
On unknown errands of the Paraclete,
Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet,
Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint
Around the shining forehead of the saint,
And are in their completeness incomplete!
In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's tower,
The lily of Florence blossoming in stone,—
A vision, a delight, and a desire,
The builder's perfect and centennial flower,
That in the night of ages bloomed alone,
But wanting still the glory of the spire.
* Charlemagne may be called by pre-eminence the monarch of farmers. According to the German tradition, in seasons of great abundance his spirit crosses the Rhine on a golden bridge at Bingen, and blesses the cornfields and the vineyards.
"Like a fair lady at her casement shines
The Evening Star, the star of love and rest."
TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,
With thoughtful pace, and sad majestic eyes,
Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,
Like Farinata from his fiery tomb.
Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom;
Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,
What soft compassion glows, as in the skies
The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!
Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks,
By Fra Hilario in his diocese,
As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,
The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;
And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
Thy voice along the cloisters whispers, "Peace!"
'Tis late at night, and in the realm of sleep
My little lambs are folded like the flocks;
From room to room I hear the wakeful clocks
Challenge the passing hour, like guards that keep
Their solitary watch on tower and steep;
Far off I hear the crowing of the cocks,
And through the opening door that time unlocks
Feel the fresh breathing of To-morrow creep.
To-morrow! the mysterious, unknown guest,
Who cries to me: "Remember Barmecide,
And tremble to be happy with the rest."
And I make answer: "I am satisfied;
I dare not ask; I know not what is best;
God hath already said what shall betide."
THE EVENING STAR.
Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
Whose panes
the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair lady at her casement shines
The Evening Star, the star of love and rest!
And then anon she doth herself divest
Of all her radiant garments, and reclines
Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,
With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.
|