Of tenderness and watchful care! Sail forth into the sea, O ship! Through wind and wave, right onward steer! The moistened eye, the trembling lip, Are not the signs of doubt or fear. Sail forth into the sea of life, Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! With all the hopes of future years, Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, Are all with thee, are all with thee! THE EVENING Star. JUST above yon sandy bar, As the day grows fainter and dimmer, Lonely and lovely, a single star Lights the air with a dusky glimmer. Into the ocean faint and far Falls the trail of its golden splendor, Chrysaor rising out of the sea, Showed thus glorious and thus emulous, Leaving the arms of Callirrhoë, Forever tender, soft, and tremulous. Thus o'er the ocean faint and far Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly; Is it a God, or is it a star That, entranced, I gaze on nightly! CURFEW. SOLEMNLY, mournfully, Dealing its dole, Is beginning to toll. Cover the embers, And put out the light; Dark grow the windows, No voice in the chambers, No sound in the hall! Sleep and oblivion Reign over all! The book is completed, And closed, like the day; And the hand that has written it Lays it away. 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 BRIDAINE. SOMEWHAT back from the village street Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw. "Forever- never! Never forever!" There groups of merry children played, Even as a miser counts his gold, 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, "Forever never! |