And blight it with a dew of blood?
Ha, tr-r-aitor!! * * * It is well.
And this is the last of the rejected anthems I can quote from at present, my boy, though several hundred pounds yet remain untouched.
Yours, questioningly,
Orpheus C. Kerr.
Longfellow has borrowed the refrain of “The Old Clock on the Stairs” from a phrase of Jacques Bridaine:—
“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!’”
“And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,—