Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, In that mansion used to be His great fires up the chimney roared; Never for ever!" There groups of merry children played, Those hours the ancient time-piece told— "For ever-never! Never-for ever!" From that chamber, clothed in white, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; Never for ever!" All are scattered now and fled, Never-for ever!" Never here for ever there, The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly "For ever-never! Longfellow. 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 trans ition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 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, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, Not as a child shall we again behold her, In our embraces we again enfold her, 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. Longfellow. THE OPEN WINDOW. The old house by the lindens* |