An Ember Picture

HOW strange are the freaks of memory!

The lessons of life we forget,

While a trifle, a trick of colour,
In the wonderful web is set,—

Set by some mordant of fancy,
And, spite of the wear and tear
Of time or distance or trouble,
Insists on its right to be there.

A chance had brought us together;
Our talk was of matters-of-course;
We were nothing, one to the other,
But a short half-hour's resource.

We spoke of French acting and actors,
And their easy, natural way;
Of the weather, for it was raining
As we drove home from the play.

We debated the social nothings
We bore ourselves so to discuss ;
The thunderous rumours of battle
Were silent the while for us.

Arrived at her door, we left her

With a drippingly hurried adieu,

And our wheels went crunching the gravel
Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow,

The candle she held in the door

From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk Flashed fainter, and flashed no more ;—

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded
Before we had passed the wood;
But the light of the face behind it
Went with me and stayed for good.

The vision of scarce a moment,
And hardly marked at the time,
It comes unbidden to haunt me,
Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme.

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so ;
You may find a thousand as fair ;

And yet there's her face in my memory,
With no special claim to be there.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight,

And call back to life in the coals

Old faces and hopes and fancies

Long buried, (good rest to their souls!)

Her face shines out in the embers;

I see her holding the light,

And hear the crunch of the gravel

And the sweep of the rain that night.

'Tis a face that can never grow older,
That never can part with its gleam,
'Tis a gracious possession for ever,
For is it not all a dream?

Fancy

J. R. Lowell.

E

VER let the Fancy roam,

Pleasure never is at home:

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;

Then let winged Fancy wander

Through the thought still spread beyond her

Open wide the mind's cage-door,

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O sweet Fancy ! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming;
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when

The sear faggot blazes bright,

Spirit of a winter's night;

When the soundless earth is muffled,

And the caked snow is shuffled

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon;

When the Night doth meet the Noon
In a dark conspiracy

To banish Even from her sky.

Sit thee there, and send abroad,

With a mind self-overaw'd,

Fancy, high-commission'd :-send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth has lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray ;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,

And thou shalt quaff it :—thou shalt hear
Distant harvest-carols clear;

Rustle of the reaped corn;

Sweet birds antheming the morn:

And, in the same moment-hark!

'Tis the early April lark,

Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold
The daisy and the marigold;
White-plum'd lilies, and the first

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;

Shaded hyacinth, alway

Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self-same shower.
Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,
When the hen-bird's wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest;

Then the hurry and alarm

When the bee-hive casts its swarm;

Acorns ripe down-pattering,

While the autumn breezes sing.

Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose;

Every thing is spoilt by use:

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,

Too much gaz'd at? Where's the maid
Whose lip mature is ever new?
Where's the eye, however blue,
Doth not weary? Where's the face
One would meet in every place?
Where's the voice, however soft,
One would hear so very oft?

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.