University of Virginia Library

38.

Faces in the fire
Form and fade before me as I look,
Tales of Life and Death from Memory's book,
Past and Present, wraiths of unfulfilled desire.

42

Hopes and fears bygone,
Castles in the air, long come to nought,
Fantasies of half-forgotten thought,
Dreams, of darkness bred, that died before the dawn.
In the glowing coals
How they live and breathe, the things that were
And that were not, eyes of women fair,
Eidola in vain of unembodied souls!
Through the midnight air,
O'er the snow the Christmas bells ring loud;
These the passing-bells and that the shroud
Of the phantom faiths that filled the world whilere.
In Time's furnace-flame
Melted, like my dreams, to nought are they;
All that lives and lasts of them to-day
As the pictures is the glowing embers frame.