strange, old-fashioned, silent town, The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,The wooden houses, quaint and brown. We sat and talked until the night, Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight, Our voices only broke the gloom. We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said, Of what had been, and might have been, 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, And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
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, As suddenly, from out the fire
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, The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames, 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.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within. BY THE FIRESIDE
RESIGNATION
There is no flock, however watched and tended,
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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.
She is not dead,--the child of our affection,-- But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ himself doth rule.
In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead.
Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, May reach her where she lives.
Not as a child shall we again behold her; For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child;
But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion
Shall we behold her face.
And though at times impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, That cannot be at rest,--
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way.
THE BUILDERS
All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low;
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Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house, where Gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble as they seek to climb. Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall tomorrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky.
SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS
A handful of red sand, from the hot clime
Of Arab deserts brought,
