t, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"

There groups of merry children played;
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"

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;
And, in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"

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!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"

_H.W. Longfellow._

Christ in Flanders

We had forgotten You, or very nearly--
You did not seem to touch us very nearly--
Of course we thought about You now and then;
Especially in any time of trouble--
We knew that you were good in time of trouble--
But we were very ordinary men.

And there were always other things to think of--
There's lots of things a man has got to think of--
His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife;
And so we only thought of You on Sunday--
Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday--
Because there's always lots to fill one's life.

And, all the while, in street or lane or byway--
In country lane, in city street, or byway--
You walked among us, and we did not see.
Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements--
How did we miss Your footprints on our pavements?--
Can there be other folk as blind as we?

Now we remember; over here in Flanders--
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)--
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear.
We never thought about You much in England--
But now that we are far away from England--
We have no doubts, we know that You are here.

You helped us pass the jest along the trenches--
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the tren