Select Poetry.

Otago Witness, Issue 1158, 7 February 1874, Page 22

Select Poetry.

BY THE FIRE.

Dead eyes are gazing on her from the pictures on the Dead voices in the wailing winds that sweep the upland' 8 cell, . , Dead feet seem pattering round her as the raindrops lash the pane, Till she stretches bands of greeting, dumb hands that yearn in vain. Like one in fairy legend, like one in dreamland lost, At every turn by dead men's Bteps her onward way is crossed, The very flowers whispers, of who plucked them long ago, The very liirds have echoes in their trillings soft and low. The chords she touches breathe for her the music of the past. On every page the shadow of old memories ia cast, The "brooding sense of something" yone falls solemn all around, Making the common paths of life her hushed heart's holy ground. On the table-ground of middle life the dull and dreary band, Where shadowless as sunless lies the stretch of ,x beaten sand, She stands alone and listens, all behind her veiled in mist, la front dim hills beyond the vale, their summits promise kissed.

Sob on, oh wind, sigh on, oh rain, sweet faces form and die, There, where amid the caverned coals the fairy fancies lie, For in sleeping as in waking, till she crosses the dark stream, The sunshine of her lonely heart from the peopled past must gleam.