Do you say I am fickle and faithless?
Else why are the old pictures gone?
And why should the visions of many
Melt into the vision of one?
Nay! list to the voice of the Heavens,
"One Eternal alone reigns above."
Is it true? and all else are but idols,
So the heart can have only one love?
Only one, all the rest are but idols,
That fall from their shrines soon or late,
When the Love that is Lord of the temple,
Comes with sceptre and crown to the gate.
To be faithless oft means to be faithful,
To be false often means to be true;
The vale that loves clouds that are golden
Forgets them for skies that are blue.
To forget often means to remember
What we had forgotten too long;
The fragrance is not the bright flower,
The echo is not the sweet song.
Am I dreaming? No, there is the firelight,
Gaze I ever so long, all the same
I only can see in its glowing
A Heart, a Face, and a Name.
Farewell! all ye hearts, names, and faces!
Only ashes now under the blaze,
Ye never again will smile on me,
For I'm touching the end of my days.
And the beautiful fading firelight
Paints, now, with a pencil of flame,
Three pictures — yet only one picture —
A Heart, a Face, and a Name.
The Old Year and the New
How swift they go,
Life's many years,
With their winds of woe
And their storms of tears,
And their darkest of nights whose shadowy slopes
Are lit with the flashes of starriest hopes,
And their sunshiny days in whose calm heavens loom
The clouds of the tempest — the shadows of the gloom!