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, "Forever - never! Halfway up the stairs it stands, And points and beckons with its hands Like a monk, who, under his cloak, With sorrowful voice to all who pass, "Forever never! Never forever!" By day its voice is low and light ; 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, Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 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, "Forever -- 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; 796195 A And in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair, All are scattered now and fled, Some are married, some are dead; And when I ask, with throbs of pain, "Ah! when shall they all meet again?" As in the days long-since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply, "Forever never! Never forever!" Never here, forever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear, — Forever there, but never here! |