"POINTS AND BECKONS WITH ITS HANDS, LIKE A MONK, WHO, UNDER HIS CLOAK." Forever-never! Never-forever!" By day its voice is low and light; But in the silent dead of night, Distinct as a pass ing footstep's fall, It echoes along the vacant hall, And seems to say, at each chamber-door,- "Forever-never! Never-forever!" Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through every swift vicissitude 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! Never-forever!" In that mansion used to be His great fires up the chimney roar'd; Never-forever!" There groups of merry children play'd, 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; All are scatter'd now and fled, Some are married, some are dead; Never-forever!" Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, TOO LATE. "Ah! si la jeunesse savait,—si la vieillesse pouvait !" THERE sat an old man on a rock, And unceasing bewailed him of Fate,That concern where we all must take stock Though our vote has no bearing or weight; And the old man sang him an old, old song,Never sang voice so clear and strong That it could drown the old man's long, For he sang the song, "Too late! too late!" When we want, we have for our pains The promise that if we but wait Till the want has burned out of our brains, Every means shall be present to sate; While we send for the napkin the soup gets cold, While the bonnet is trimming the face grows old, When we've matched our buttons the pattern is sold, And everything comes too late,—too late! "When strawberries seemed like red heavens,Terrapin stew a wild dream,—— When my brain was at sixes and sevens, If my mother had 'folks' and ice-cream, When the goodies all came in a stream, in a "I've a splendid blood horse, and—a liver 66 I can buy boundless credits on Paris and Rome, But no palate for ménus--no eyes for a dome,— Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home, When no home but an attic he'd got,-he'd got! How I longed, in the lonest of garrets, When the tiles baked my brains all July, A rosebush-a little thatched cottage,— With a woman's chair empty close by,-close "Ah! now, though I sit on a rock, I have shared one seat with the great; I have sat-knowing naught of the clock— But the lips that kissed, and the arms that caressed, To a mouth grown stern with delay were pressed, And circled a breast that their clasp had blessed Had they only not come too late, too late!" FITZ-HUGH LUDLOW. |