LEAFLESS are the trees; their purple branches | |
| Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral, | |
| Rising silent | |
| In the Red Sea of the winter sunset. | |
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| From the hundred chimneys of the village, | 5 |
| Like the Afreet in the Arabian story, | |
| Smoky columns | |
| Tower aloft into the air of amber. | |
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| At the window winks the flickering fire-light; | |
| Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer, | 10 |
| Social watch-fires | |
| Answering one another through the darkness. | |
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| On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing, | |
| And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree | |
| For its freedom | 15 |
| Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them. | |
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| By the fireside there are old men seated, | |
| Seeing ruined cities in the ashes, | |
| Asking sadly | |
| Of the Past what it can ne’er restore them. | 20 |
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| By the fireside there are youthful dreamers, | |
| Building castles fair, with stately stairways, | |
| Asking blindly | |
| Of the Future what it cannot give them. | |
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| By the fireside tragedies are acted | 25 |
| In whose scenes appear two actors only, | |
| Wife and husband, | |
| And above them God the sole spectator. | |
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| By the fireside there are peace and comfort, | |
| Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces, | 30 |
| Waiting, watching | |
| For a well-known footstep in the passage. | |
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| Each man’s chimney is his Golden Mile-Stone; | |
| Is the central point, from which he measures | |
| Every distance | 35 |
| Through the gateways of the world around him. | |
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| In his farthest wanderings still he sees it; | |
| Hears the talking flame, the answering night-wind, | |
| As he heard them | |
| When he sat with those who were, but are not. | 40 |
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| Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion, | |
| Nor the march of the encroaching city, | |
| Drives an exile | |
| From the hearth of his ancestral homestead. | |
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| We may build more splendid habitations, | 45 |
| Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures, | |
| But we cannot | |
| Buy with gold the old associations! | |
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