Then with water fill the pitcher

Wreathed about with classic fables;

Ne'er Falernian threw a richer

Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,

How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

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
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all,

Half-way up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands. From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass,

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,

It echoes along the vacant hall,

Along the ceiling, along the floor,

And seems to say, at each chamber-door, "For ever never!

Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, 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,

In that mansion used to be

Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;

The stranger feasted at his board;

But, like the skeleton at the feast,

That warning timepiece never ceased,

"For ever-never!

There groups of merry children played,

There youths and maidens dreaming strayed; O precious hours! O golden prime,

And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece told,

From that chamber, clothed in white,

The bride came forth on her wedding night;

There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;