love for ever!

SHADOWS IN THE FIRE.

She sat and she gazed in the fire:
In the fire with a dreamy look:
And she seemed as though she could never tire
Of reading the fiery book.

She saw, midst the embers bright,
A figure both manly and fair,
Blue eyes that shone with a loving light:
And showers of nut-brown hair.

She saw her own image stand
By that form on a sunny day:
One kiss of the lip: one grasp of the hand:
And her heart was borne away.

She saw, through the flickering flame,
A bier in a darkened room:
And a coffin that bore her idol's name
Was hurried away to the tomb.

She saw, from a distant strand,
A missive sent over the main:
The letter was writ by a stranger's hand:
And she sighed for her lover in vain.

So she sat and she gazed in the fire:
In the fire, with a dreamy look:
And she seemed as though she could never tire
Of reading the fiery book.

THE BELFRY OLD.

On a New Year's Eve, by a belfry old,
With a sea of solemn graves around,
While the grim grey tower of the village church
Kept silent ward o'er each grassy mound,
With a cloak of ivy about it grown,
Fringed round, like fur, with a snowy fray;
On a New Year's Eve I watched alone
The life of the last year ebbing away.

Anon there came from the belfry out
A strange wild sound as of pleasure and pain;
For the birth of the new a jubilant shout:
For the death of the old a sad refrain.
And the voice went throbbingly through the air,
Went sobbing and sighing, with laughter blent;
All the echoes awakening everywhere;
A guest that was welcomed wherever, it went.

I thought, as the sound of each babbling bell
Came gushing away from the belfry old,
That stories such as the dying tell
Were up in that belfry being told:
As the words men mutter in life's last fear
Seem to shrink from Eternity back to Time,
So it seemed to me that each echo clear
Came back from the grave with a lesson sublime.

"Yet another year!" it seemed to say;
Gone one more year in the battle of life;
With its yearnings in gloom for the coming day,
Its pantings for peace 'mid the daily strife;
Clay lips that kissed but a year ago
With the fervent warmth of life and love;
Dear eyes that gladdened bright homes below
In one short year with the stars above.

Gone one more year, with