Leafless are the trees; their purple branches
Spread themselves abroad, like reefs of coral,
Rising silent
In the Red Sea of the Winter sunset.

From the hundred chimneys of the village,
Like the Afreet in the Arabian story,
Smoky columns
Tower aloft into the air of amber.

At the window winks the flickering fire-light;
Here and there the lamps of evening glimmer,
Social watch-fires
Answering one another through the darkness.

On the hearth the lighted logs are glowing,
And like Ariel in the cloven pine-tree
For its freedom
Groans and sighs the air imprisoned in them.

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.

By the fireside there are youthful dreamers,
Building castles fair, with stately stairways,
Asking blindly
Of the Future what it cannot give them.

By the fireside tragedies are acted
In whose scenes appear two actors only,
Wife and husband,
And above them God the sole spectator.

By the fireside there are peace and comfort,
Wives and children, with fair, thoughtful faces,
Waiting, watching
For a well-known footstep in the passage.

Each man's chimney is his Golden Mile-stone;
Is the central point, from which he measures
Every distance
Through the gateways of the world around him.

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.

Happy he whom neither wealth nor fashion,
Nor the march of the encroaching city,
Drives an exile
From the hearth of his ancestral homestead.

We may build more splendid habitations,
Fill our rooms with paintings and with sculptures,
But we cannot
Buy with gold the old associations!

Death came to the earth, by his side was Spring,
They came from God's own bowers,
And the earth was full of their wandering,
For they both were sowing flowers.

"I sow," said Spring, "by the stream and the wood,
And the village children know
The gay glad time of my own sweet prime,
And where my blossoms grow.

"There is not a spot in the quiet wood
But hath heard the sound of my feet,
And the violets come from their solitude
When my tears have made them sweet."

"I sow," said Death, "where the hamlet stands,
I sow in the churchyard drear;
I drop in the grave with gentle hands,
My flowers from year to year.

"The young and the old go into their rest,
To the sleep that awaits them below;
But I clasp the children unto my breast,
And kiss them before I go."

"I sow," said Spring, "but my flowers decay
When the year turns weak and old,
When the breath of the bleak wind wears them away,
And they wither and droop in the mould.

"But they come again when the young earth feels
The new blood leap in her veins,
When the fountain of wonderful life unseals,
And the earth is alive with the rains."

"I sow," said Death; "but my flowers unseen
Pass away from the land of men,
Nor sighs nor tears through the long sad years
Ever bring back their bloom again.

"But I know they are wondrous bright and fair
In the fields of their high abode;
Your flowers are the flowers that a child may wear,
But mine are the blossoms of God."

Death came to the earth, by his side was Spring;
The two came from God's own bowers;
One sowed in night and the other in light,
Yet they both were sowing flowers.