"Sail on!" it says, "sail on, ye stately ships! THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD. WE sat within the farm-house old, Not far away we saw the port, The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,The light-house,-the dismantled fort,— 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, Of what had been, and might have been, And who was changed, and who was dead; And all that fills the hearts of friends, The first slight swerving of the heart, The very tones in which we spake Had something strange, I could but mark; Oft died the words upon our lips, Built of the wreck of stranded ships, The flames would leap and then expire. And, as their splendour flashed and failed, And sent no answer back again. The windows, rattling in their frames,- 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 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, The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 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 vapours, 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,—— Where she no longer needs our poor protection, In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, Day after day we think what she is doing Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair. Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, Not as a child shall we again behold her; In our embraces we again enfold her, She will not be a child; But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 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; 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, In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the Gods see everywhere. |