Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;

Ivy crowns that brow supernal As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal.

Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards, sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer

Bore, as trophies and oblations,

Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,

Much this mystic throng expresses:

Bacchus was the type of vigor,

And Silenus of excesses.

These are ancient ethnic revels,

Of a faith long since forsaken; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.

Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.

Claudius, though he sang of flagons

And huge tankards filled with Rhenish, From that fiery blood of dragons

Never would his own replenish.

Even Redi, though he chaunted

Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,

Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.

Then with water fill the pitcher

Wreathed about with classic fables;

Ne'er Falernian threw a richer

Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,

How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus !

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!"

JACQUES BRIDAINE.

SOMEWHAT back from the village street

Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all,

"Forever never!

Never-forever!"

Halfway up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass,

"Forever never!

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,

It echoes along the vacant hall,