FIRESIDE MUSINGS.

The hollow winds blow loud and shrill, In heavy gusts like distant thunder, Lorn spirits of the howling hill, I list safe housed in speechless wonder; The winter blasts of gustful days, They make, my love, my hearth’s bright blaze. My fancy flits like rover wild, Recalls both days and years fast fleeting, The spring-time, when I was a child, All vanished with their bright-morn greeting; Pale wasting Time his glass doth raise, Advancing, as I watch the blaze. His stealthy step and gaunt-like form, His bony hand so grisly shapen, With mouldering touch, like canker-worm, I seem to start, half sleep, half waken; With fixed wild glare, the spoiler gaze, Then ruminate my red-coals blaze. I call to aid my best resolve, My better genius, sage reflection, To ponder deep as years revolve, My life’s last close, without dejection; Resigned my wasting taper gaze, Such thought awaked the flick’ring blaze.