That number not the half of those we knew,

Ye, against whose familiar names not yet

The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute! The horologe of Time
Strikes the half-century with a solemn
chime,

And summons us together once again,
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain.

Where are the others? Voices from the deep Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!"

I name no names; instinctively I feel Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel,

And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss,

For every heart best knoweth its own loss.

I see their scattered gravestones gleam ing white

Through the pale dusk of the impending night;

O'er all alike the impartial sunset

throws

cloud

Are reassured if some one reads aloud A tale of wonder, with enchantment fraught,

Or wild adventure, that diverts their thought,

Let me endeavor with a tale to chase The gathering shadows of the time and place,

And banish what we all too deeply feel Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal.

In mediæval Rome, I know not where, There stood an image with its arm in air,

And on its lifted finger, shining clear, A golden ring with the device, "Strike here!'

Greatly the people wondered, though none guessed

The meaning that these words but half expressed,

Until a learned clerk, who at noonday With downcast eyes was passing on his

were stone;

And the vast hall was filled in every part With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed

The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;

Then from the table, by his greed made bold,

He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,

The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,

The archer sped his arrow, at their call, Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,

And all was dark around and overhead ;Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms
of gold;

Our lusts and passions are the downward stair

That leads the soul from a diviner air; The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;

Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;

The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone

By avarice have been hardened into stone;

The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf Tempts from his books and from his nobler self.

chased

With rubies, and the plates and knives were gold,

And gold the bread and viands manifold.

Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, Were seated gallant knights in armor clad,

less strife,

The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

zone,

told

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Edipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,

When each had numbered more than fourscore years,

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,

At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

These are indeed exceptions; but they show

How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow

Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm While still the skies are clear, the weather warm,

So something in us, as old age draws

near,

Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, Descends the elastic ladder of the air; The telltale blood in artery and vein

Sinks from its higher levels in the brain;
Whatever poet, orator, or sage
May say of it, old age is still old age.
It is the waning, not the crescent moon;
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of

noon :

It is not strength, but weakness; not desire,

But its surcease; not the fierce heat of fire,

The burning and consuming element, But that of ashes and of embers spent, In which some living sparks we still discern,

Enough to warm, but not enough to burn.

What then? Shall we sit idly down and say

The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite

Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Öde,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but be-
gin;

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another
dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,'
And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand
Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.

CADENABBIA.

LAKE OF COMO.

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,

As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade

Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate

I make the marble stairs my seat, And hear the water, as I wait, Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells
Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town

The freighted barges come and go, Their pendent shadows gliding down

By town and tower submerged below.

The hills sweep upward from the shore, With villas scattered one by one Upon their wooded spurs, and lower Bellaggio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled mass

Of walls and woods, of light and shade,