OLD AGE.
By Alfred B. Street.
All day the chill bleak wind had shrieked and wailed
Through leafless forests, and o'er meadows sear;
Through the fierce sky great sable clouds had sailed;
Outlines were hard—all nature's looks were drear.
Gone, Indian Summer's bland, delicious haze,
Thickening soft nights and filming mellow days.
Then rose gray clouds; thin fluttered first the snow,
Then like loose shaken fleeces, then in dense streams
That muffled gradually all below
In pearly smoothness. Then outburst the gleams
At sunset; nature shone in flashing white,
And the last rays tinged all with rosy light.
So Life's bland Autumn o'er, may old age come
In muffling peace, and death display hope's radiant bloom.
THE CASTLE IN THE AIR.[L]
By R. H. Stoddard.
I.
We have two lives about us,
Within us, and without us;
Two worlds in which we dwell,
Alternate Heaven and Hell:
Without, the sombre Real,
Within our heart of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!
I stand between the thresholds of the two,
Fettered and bound with many a heavy chain;
I strive to rend their links, but all in vain;
The False is strong, and holds me from the True.
Only in dreams my spirit wanders o'er
The starry portal of the world of bliss,
And lives the life which Fate denies in this,
Which may have once been mind, but will be, nevermore.
II.
My Castle stands alone,
Away from Earth and Time,
In some diviner clime,
In Fancy's tropic zone,
Beneath its summer skies,
Where all the live-long year the summer never dies!
A stately marble pile whose pillars rise,
From sculptured bases, fluted to the dome,
With wreathéd friezes crowned, all carven nice
With pendant leaves, like ragged rims of foam;
A thousand windows front the rising sun,
Deep-set between the columns, many paned,
Tri-arched, emblazoned, gorgeously stained,
Crimson and purple, green and blue, and dun,
And all their wedded colors fall below,
Like rainbows shattered on a field of snow;
A bordering gallery runs along the roof,
Topt by a cupola, whose glittering spire
Pierces the brooding clouds, a glowing woof,
With golden spindles wove in Morning's loom of fire!
III.