HE little gate was reached at last,

Half hid in lilacs down the lane;

She pushed it wide, and, as she past,

A wistful look she backward cast,

And said, "Auf wiedersehen!"

With hand on latch, a vision white
Lingered reluctant, and again,

Half doubting if she did aright,

Soft as the dews that fell that night,

She said, "Auf wiedersehen!"

The lamp's clear gleam flits up the stair;

I linger in delicious pain;

AUF WIEDERSEHEN!

Ah! in that chamber, whose rich air

To breathe in thought I scarcely dare,
Thinks she, "Auf wiedersehen!"

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art!

The English words had seemed too fain, But these they drew us heart to heart,

Yet held us tenderly apart;

She said, "Auf wiedersehen!"

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AN EMBER PICTURE.

J. RUSSELL LOWELL.

OW strange are the freaks of memory!
The lessons of life we forget,
While a trifle, a trick of colour,
In the wonderful web is set,—

Set by some mordant of fancy,
And, spite of the wear and tear
Of time or distance or trouble,
Insists on its right to be there.

A chance had brought us together;
Our talk was of matters of course;
We were nothing, one to the other,
But a short half-hour's resource.

AN EMBER PICTURE.

233

Arrived at her door, we left her

With a drippingly hurried adieu,

And our wheels went crunching the gravel
Of the oak-darkened avenue.

As we drove away through the shadow,

The candle she held at the door

From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree-trunk
Flashed fainter, and flashed no more ;—

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded

Before we had passed the wood;

But the light of the face behind it

Went with me and stayed for good.

Had she beauty? Well, not what they call so ;
You may find a thousand as fair;
And yet there's her face in my memory

With no special claim to be there.

234

AN EMBER PICTURE.

As I sit sometimes in the twilight,

And call back to life in the coals

Old faces and hopes and fancies

Long buried (good rest to their souls!)-

Her face shines out in the embers;

I see her holding the light,

And hear the crunch of the gravel,

And the sweep of the rain that night.