It echoes along the vacant hall, Along the ceiling, along the floor, And seems to say, at each chamber-door,— "Forever-never! Never-forever! 99 Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, It calmly repeats those words of awe,— But, like the skeleton at the feast, That warning timepiece never ceased, "Forever-never! 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, 45 40 Those hours the ancient timepiece told,"Forever-never! Never-forever! " From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding night; The dead lay in his shroud of snow; Was heard the old clock on the stair,— "Forever-never! Never-forever!" All are scattered now and fled, And when I ask, with throbs of pain, "Ah! when shall they all meet again?" As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply, — "Forever-never! Never-forever! Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear, - The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly, "Forever-never! Never-forever!" THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD. DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD. WE sat within the farm-house old, Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene, Of what we once had thought and said, 5 10 Of what had been, and might have been, 15 And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, When first they feel, with secret pain, Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, And never can be one again; The first slight swerving of the heart, That words are powerless to express, 20 And leave it still unsaid in part, The very tones in which we spake 25 Had something strange, I could but mark;` The leaves of memory seemed to make A mournful rustling in the dark. Oft died the words upon our lips, Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendor flashed and failed, We thought of wrecks upon the main, Of ships dismasted, that were hailed And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames, All mingled vaguely in our speech; Until they made themselves a part Of fancies floating through the brain, The long-lost ventures of the heart, That send no answers back again. 30 35 10 O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned! 45 They were indeed too much akin, The drift-wood fire without that burned, The thoughts that burned and glowed within. RESIGNATION. THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there! There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, But has one vacant chair! The air is full of farewells to the dying, And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted! Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume this dark disguise. We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. |