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 VOICES OF THE NIGHT, 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS.
 
 VOICES OF THE NIGHT; 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS. 
 
 HKNRY WADSWOHTH LONGFELLOW. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 WITH SIXTY-FOUK ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD, 
 FROM DKSIGXS HY JANE 1C. BF.XHAM, 11IRKET FOSTEK, KTC. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 
 
 MDCCCLII.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18.10, lu- 
 ll. W. LOXGFKI.LOV, 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
 
 PS 
 2270 
 
 At 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 HYMN TO THE NIGHT 6 
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE 8 
 
 THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS . 
 THE LIGHT OF STARS . 
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS 
 
 FLOWERS 
 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY 1! ' 
 
 MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR 
 
 I/ ENVOI ... 
 
 THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 DEDICATION 2 ' 
 
 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP 
 
 THE EVENING STAR 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE SF.A 
 
 TWILIGHT 
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT
 
 THE LIGHTHOUSE . . . . M 
 
 THE FIRE OF DRIFTWOOD 57 
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 RESIGNATION 59 
 
 THE BUILDERS 02 
 
 SAND OF THE DESERT IN AN HOURGLASS 63 
 
 MUDS OF PASSAGE ... GC 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW 08 
 
 KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN ........ 70 
 
 CASPAR BECERRA ........ 72 
 
 PEGASUS IN POUND 73 
 
 TEGNERS DRAPA 76 
 
 SONNET ON MRS. KEMBLE's READINGS FROM SHAKSPEARE . . .7! 
 
 THE SINGERS 79 
 
 SUSPIRIA S3 
 
 HYMN FOR MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION 83 
 
 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING 87 
 
 THE SLAVE'S DREAM 88 
 
 THE GOOD PART THAT SHALL NOT BE TAKEN AWAY yi 
 
 THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP (12 
 
 THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT . . . . . . .91 
 
 THE WITNESSES 95 
 
 THE QUADROON GIRL 97 
 
 THE WARNING 100 
 
 BALLADS, SONGS, AND SONNETS. 
 BALLADS. 
 
 THE SKELETON IX ARMOUR 103 
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS . .112
 
 SONGS. 
 
 SEAWEED .... 
 
 THE DAY IS DONE 
 
 AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY 
 
 TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK 
 
 WALTER YON DER VOGELWE1DE 
 
 DRINKING SONG 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS 
 
 Till: ARROW AND THE SONG 
 
 AUTUMN" Ki(i 
 
 THE EVENING STAR 137 
 
 DANTE 138 
 
 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 AN Al'KIL DAY HI 
 
 AUTUMN 1 
 
 WOODS IN WINTER 1J.5 
 
 HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM 147 
 
 SUNRISE ON THE HILLS Uil 
 
 THE SriRIT OF POETRY 1.51 
 
 ISURIAI, OF THE MINNISINK 1.53 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS TOEMS. 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH l.VP 
 
 ENDYMION ............ li 
 
 THE TWO LOCKS OF HAIR ......... UJ 
 
 IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY . . . . . . . . . Hifj 
 
 THE RAINY DAY ........... IfH 
 
 GOD'S-ACRI-: , . K>9
 
 TO THE 1UVE11 CHAHLES ......... 170 
 
 BLIND BAKT1MEUS .... .17:! 
 
 THE GOBLET OF LIFE .......... 173 
 
 MAIDENHOOD . . . . . . . ' . . . . 17(i 
 
 EXCELSIOR 170 
 
 CARILLON . . . . . . . ... . . .181 
 
 THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 181 
 
 A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 1S7 
 
 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD ........ 190 
 
 NUREMBERG 192 
 
 THE NORMAN BARON . . 1M 
 
 RAIN IN SUMMER 193 
 
 TO A CHILD ........... 2C3 
 
 THE OCCULTATION OF ORION ......... 211 
 
 THE BRIDGE ........... 215 
 
 TO THE DRIVING CLOUD 218 
 
 CURFEW .,.,
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 ' Beneath some patriarchal tree 
 
 I lay upon the ground," BIRKKT FOSTER. 2 
 
 " I heard the trailing garments of the Night 
 
 Sweep through her marble halls !" JA.NK E. BKNIIAM. 6 
 
 " And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 
 
 The flowers she most did love." JAM-: E. BKNHAM. 10 
 
 Country Church-yard. BIHKET FOSTF.U, 11 
 
 Flowers. JANE E. BENHAM. 16 
 
 " Then, too, the Old Year dieth, 
 
 And the forests ntter a moan." BIUKKT FOSTER. 2:> 
 
 THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 " A vessel as goodly, and strong, and staunch, 
 As ever weathered a wintry sea !" BIRKKT FOSTER. 2!) 
 
 " Beside the Master, when he spoke, 
 A youth, against an anchor leaning." BIHKKT FOSTER. 33 
 
 " And when the hot, long day was o'er. 
 The young man at the Master's door 
 Sat with the maiden calm and still." BIRKKT FOSTER. 30 
 
 ' ; And around the bows and along the side 
 The heavy hammers and mallets plied." BIUKET FOSTER. 38 
 
 " With one exulting, joyous bound, 
 She leaps into the ocean's arms !" BIRKKT FOSTKR. 44 
 
 " Lonely and lovely, a single star 
 
 Lights the air with a dusky glimmer." BIRKKT FOSTKK. 47 
 
 " Saw a fair and stately galley, 
 
 Steering onward to the land." BIRKET FOSTKR. -10 
 
 " A little face at the window 
 
 Peers out into the night." JANE E. BKNHAM. 50 
 
 A*
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATION'S. 
 
 XV. " The twilight is sad and cloudy, 
 
 The wind blows wild and free." BIRKET FOSTKU. 51 
 
 VI. " The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, 
 
 A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day." BIKKET FOSTER. 54 
 
 XVII. " In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 
 
 By guardian angels led." 59 
 
 VIII. "Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth 
 
 Held close in her caress." JANE E. BENHAM. G4 
 
 XIX. " I saw the nursery windows 
 
 Wide open to the air." BIRKKT FOSTER. G8 
 
 XX. " The first a youth, with soul of fire, 
 
 Held in his hand a golden lyre." K. WKNIIEUT. MI 
 
 XXI. " The second, with a bearded face, 
 
 Stood singing in the market place." K. WKMIKUT. 81 
 
 XXII. " A gray, old man, the third and last. 
 
 Sang in cathedrals dim and vast." K. WK.MIKUT. 82 
 
 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 XXILI. Dr Channing, 87 
 
 XXIV. " And then at furious speed he rode 
 
 Along the Niger's bank." BIKKET FOS-IKH. 8s 
 
 XXV. " He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, 
 
 Like a wild beast in his lair." BIKKET FOSTKR. 93 
 
 XXVI. "The Slaver in the broad lagoon 
 
 Lay moored with idle sail." BIKKET FOSTKR. i>7 
 
 BALLADS, SONGS, AND SONNETS. 
 XXVII. Round Tower at Newport. BIKKEI- FOSTKR. 103 
 
 XXVIII. " Then launched they to the blast, 
 
 Bent like a reed each mast." BIUKET FOSTKR. Id 3 
 
 XXIX. " And in the forest's shade 
 
 Our vows were plighted." BIUKKT FOSTKK. 108 
 
 XXX, " The breakers were right beneath her bows, 
 
 She drifted a dreary wreck." UIUKET FOSTER. 112
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XI 
 
 XXXI. " At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 
 
 A fisherman stood aghast." BIRKET FOSTEU. 116 
 
 XXXII. ' From the tumbling surf, that buries 
 
 The Orkneyan skerries," BIRKET FOSTKR. 117 
 
 XXXIII. " Once Prince Frederick's Guard 
 
 Sang them in their smoky barracks." BIRKET FOSTER. 125 
 
 XXXIV. " On his tomb the birds were feasted 
 
 By the children of the choir." JANK E. BENHAM. 126 
 
 XXXV. " Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, 
 
 Led by his inebriate Satyrs." 129 
 
 XXXVI. " There groups of merry children played, 
 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed." BIRKET FOSTER. 13;i 
 
 XXXVII. Autumn. BIRKET FOSTER. 13G 
 
 XXXVIII. Dante : from the Fresco by Giotto. 138 
 
 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 ;XXIX. " Inverted in the tide, 
 
 Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shauows 
 
 throw." BIRKET FOSTER. 141 
 
 XL. " And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke, 
 
 Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail." BIUKET FOSTER. 14'! 
 
 XLI. ;< O'er the bare upland, and away 
 
 Through the long reach of desert woods." BIUKET FOSTER. 14(! 
 
 XLII. " And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills, 
 AVas ringing to the merry shout, 
 That faint and far the glen sent out." BIRKET FOSTER. 1.50 
 
 XLIII. ' In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
 
 From its full laver, pours the white cascade." BIRKET FOSTER. 151 
 
 XL1V. "And a band 
 
 Of stern in heart, and strong in hand, 
 Came winding down beside the wave, 
 To lay the red chief in his grave." BIRKET FOSTER. 154 
 
 XLY. " And swift an arrow cleaved its way 
 
 To his stern heart ! ' ' Bi I:KET FOSTER . 156
 
 ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 XLVI. " Under a spreading chesnut tree 
 
 The village smithy stands." BIRKET FOSTKR. 159 
 
 XLVII. " He hears his daughter's voice 
 
 Singing in the village choir." BIRKKT FOSTKR. 101 
 
 XLV1II. " The ris-ing moon has hid the stars." BIRKET FOSTKH. 102 
 
 XLIX. Diana. JANE E. BENUAM. 103 
 
 L. " The sun is bright, the air is clear, 
 
 The darting swallows soar and sing." BIIIKKT FOSTER. 16(i 
 
 LI. " This is the field and Acre of our God, 
 
 This is the place, where human harvests grow !" BIRKET FOSTKR. 109 
 L1I. " Gazing, with a timid glance, 
 
 On the brooklet's swift advance, 
 
 On the river's broad expanse !" JANK E. BENHAM. 17(i 
 
 LIII. " A voice replied, far up the height, 
 
 Excelsior !" JANK E. BKNHAM. 179 
 
 L1V. " In the market place of Bruges stands the belfry old 
 
 and brown." BIRKET FOSTKR. 184 
 
 LV. " This is the place. Stand still, my steed, 
 
 Let me review the scene." BIRK KT FOSTKR. 1 87 
 
 LVI. House of Albrecht Durer. BIRKKT FOSTKR. 193 
 
 LVII. Albrecht Durer, from the portrait by himself. 193 
 
 LVIII. " Near at hand, 
 
 From under the sheltering trees, 
 The farmer sees 
 
 His pastures, and his fields of grain," BIRKKT FOSTKR. 201 
 
 LIX. " With what a look of proud command 
 Thou shakest in thy little hand 
 
 The coral rattle with its silver bells." JANK E. BKNIIAM. 204 
 
 LX. Residence of H. W. Longfellow, (formerly occupied 
 
 by Washington.) ' BIKKKT FOSTKR. 200 
 
 LXI. " Thou comest back to parley with repose." JANK E. BKNIIAM. 208 
 
 LXII. " The moon was pallid, but not faint ; 
 
 And beautiful as some fair saint." JANK E. BKNHAM. 213 
 
 LXIII. " I stood on the bridge at midnight." BIUKKT FOSTKR. 215 
 
 LX1V. " Dark grow the windows, 
 
 And Quenched is the fire." BIRKKT FOSTKK. 220
 
 
 PLEASANT it was, when woods were gi'cen,.. !* 
 
 And winds were soft and low, 
 To lie amid some sylvan scene, 
 Where, the long drooping boughs between, ( 
 Shadows dark and sunlight sheen 
 
 Alternate come and go ; 
 
 Or where the denser grove receives 
 
 Xo sunlight from above, 
 But the dark foliage interweaves
 
 2 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 In one unbroken roof of leaves, 
 Underneath whose sloping eaves 
 The shadows hardly move. 
 
 Beneath some patriarchal tree 
 
 I lay upon the ground ; 
 His hoary arms uplifted he, 
 And all the broad leaves over me 
 Clapped their little hands in glee, 
 
 With one continuous sound ; 
 
 A slumberous sound, a sound that brings 
 
 The feelings of a dream, 
 As of innumerable wings, 
 As, when a bell no longer swings, 
 Faint the hollow murmur rings 
 
 O'er meadow, lake, and stream. 
 
 And dreams of that which cannot die, 
 Bright visions, came to me, 
 
 As lapped in thought I used to lie, 
 
 .And gaze into the summer sky, 
 
 Where the sailing clouds went by, 
 Like ships upon the sea ; 
 
 Dreams that the soul of youth engage 
 
 Ere Fancy has been quelled ; 
 
 Old legends of the monkish page, 
 
 Traditions of the saint and sage, 
 
 Tales that have the rime of age. 
 
 And chronicles of Eld.
 
 And, loving still these quaint old themes, 
 
 Even in the city's throng 
 I feel the freshness of the streams, 
 That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams, 
 Water the green land of dreams, 
 
 The holy land of song. 
 
 Therefore, at Pentecost, which hrings 
 The Spring, clothed like a bride, 
 
 When nestling buds unfold their wings, 
 
 And bishop's-caps have golden rings, 
 
 Musing upon many tilings, 
 
 I sought the woodlands wide. 
 
 The green trees whispered low and mild ; 
 
 It was a sound of joy ! 
 They were my playmates when a child, 
 And rocked me in their arms so wild ! 
 Still they looked at me and smiled, 
 
 As if I were a boy ; 
 
 And ever whispered, mild and low, 
 " Come, be a child once more ! " 
 
 And waved their long arms to and fro, 
 
 And beckoned solemnly and slow ; 
 
 O, I could not choose but go 
 Into the woodlands hoar ; 
 
 Into the blithe and breathing air, 
 
 Into the solemn wood, 
 Solemn and silent everywhere !
 
 4 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 Nature with folded hands seemed there, 
 Kneeling at her evening prayer ! 
 Like one in prayer I stood. 
 
 Before me rose an avenue 
 
 Of tall and sombrous pines ; 
 
 Abroad their fan-like branches grew, 
 
 And, where the sunshine darted through, 
 
 Spread a vapour soft and blue, 
 In long and sloping lines. 
 
 And, falling on my weary brain, 
 Like a fast-falling shower, 
 
 The dreams of youth came back again ; 
 
 Low lispings of the summer rain, 
 
 Dropping on the ripened grain, 
 As once upon the flower. 
 
 Visions of childhood ! Stay, O stay ! 
 
 Ye were so sweet and wild ! 
 And distant voices seemed to say, 
 " It cannot be ! They pass away ! 
 Other themes demand thy lay ; 
 
 Thou art no more a child ! 
 
 " The land of Song within thee lies, 
 Watered by living springs ; 
 
 The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes 
 
 Are gates unto that Paradise, 
 
 Holy thoughts, like stars, arise, 
 Its clouds are angels' wings.
 
 " Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be, 
 Not mountains capped with snow, 
 
 Nor forests sounding like the sea, 
 
 Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly, 
 
 Where the woodlands bend to see 
 The bending heavens below. 
 
 " There is a forest where the din 
 
 Of iron branches sounds ! 
 A mighty river roars between, 
 And whosoever looks therein, 
 Sees the heavens all black with sin, 
 
 Sees not its depths, nor bounds. 
 
 " Athwart the swinging branches cast, 
 Soft rays of sunshine pour ; 
 
 Then comes the fearful wintry blast ; 
 
 Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast ; 
 
 Pallid lips say, ' It is past ! 
 We can return no more ! ' 
 
 " Look, then, into thine heart, and write ! 
 
 Yes, into Life's deep stream ! 
 All forms of sorrow and delight, 
 All solemn Voices of the Night, 
 That can soothe thee, or affright, 
 
 Be these henceforth thy theme."
 
 
 IIYMX TO THE NIGHT. 
 'AffTTCKra;, TpiXXioroc. 
 
 I HEARD the trailing garments of the Night 
 Sweep through her marble halls ! 
 
 I saw her sahlc skirts all fringed with light 
 From the celestial walls !
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE. 7 
 
 I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 
 
 Stoop o'er me from above ; 
 The calm, majestic presence of the Night, 
 
 As of the one I love. 
 
 I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, 
 
 The manifold, soft chimes, 
 That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, 
 
 Like some old poet's rhymes. 
 
 From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 
 
 My spirit drank repose ; 
 The fountain of perpetual peace flows there, 
 
 From those deep cisterns flows. 
 
 O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear 
 
 "What man has borne before ! 
 Thoxi layest thy finger on the lips of Care, 
 
 And they complain no more. 
 
 Peace ! Peace ! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer ! 
 
 Descend with broad- winged flight, 
 The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, 
 
 The best-beloved Night.
 
 A PSALM OF LIFE. 
 
 II) TO THE PSALMIST. 
 
 TELL me not in mournful numbers, 
 " Life is but an empty dream ! " 
 
 For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
 
 And things are not what they seem. 
 
 Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 
 
 And the grave is not its .goal ; 
 " Dust thou art, to dust retumest," 
 
 Was not spoken of the soul. 
 
 Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 
 
 Is our destined end or way ; 
 But to act, that each to-morrow 
 
 Find us farther than to-day. 
 
 Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
 
 And our hearts, though stout and brave, 
 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave. 
 
 In the world's broad field of battle, 
 
 In the bivouac of Life, 
 ,j Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 
 Be a hero in the strife ! 
 
 Trust jnp Future, howe'er pleasant ! 
 Let the dead Past bury its dead !
 
 THE REAPER AM) THE FLOWERS. 
 
 Act, act in the living Present ! 
 
 Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 
 
 Lives of great men all remind us 
 We can make our lives sublime, 
 
 And, departing, leave behind us 
 
 Footprints on the sands of time ; 
 
 Footprints, that perhaps another, 
 Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
 
 A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
 Seeing, shall take heart again. 
 
 Let us then be up and doing, 
 With a heart for any fate ; 
 
 Still achieving, still pursuing, 
 
 Learn to labour and to wait. * \ 
 
 THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. 
 
 THERE is a Reaper, whose name is Death, 
 
 And, with his sickle keen, 
 He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, 
 
 And the flowers that grow between. 
 
 " Shall I have nought that is fair ?" saith he ; 
 
 " Have nought but the bearded grain ? 
 Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me, 
 
 I will give them all back again."
 
 {* He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, 
 
 He kissed their drooping leaves ; 
 It was for the Lord of Paradise 
 He bound them in his sheaves. 
 
 " My Lord has need of these flowerets gay, 
 The Reaper said, and smiled ;
 
 THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. 
 
 Dear tokens of the earth are they, 
 "\Vhere He was once a child. 
 
 " They shall all bloom hi fields of light, 
 
 Transplanted by my care, 
 And saints, upon their garments white, 
 
 These sacred blossoms wear." 
 
 And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 
 The flowers she most did love ; 
 
 She knew she should find them all agaii 
 In the fields of light above. 
 
 O, not in cruelty, not in. wrath, 
 The Reaper came that day ; 
 
 T was an angel visited the green earth, 
 And took the flowers away.
 
 THE LIGHT OF STARS. 
 
 THE night is come, but not too soon ; 
 
 And sinking silently, 
 All silently, the little moon 
 
 Drops down behind the sky. 
 
 There is no light in earth or heaven, 
 But the cold light of stars ; 
 
 And the first watch of night is given 
 To the red planet Mars. 
 
 Is it the tender star of love ? 
 
 The star of love and dreams ? 
 O no ! from that blue tent above, 
 
 A hero's armour gleams. 
 
 And earnest thoughts within me rise, 
 
 When I behold afar, 
 Suspended in the evening skies, 
 
 The shield of that red star. 
 
 () star of strength ! I see thee stand 
 And smile upon my pain ; 
 
 Thou beckoncst with thy mailed hand. 
 And I am strong again.
 
 THE LIGHT OF STARS. 1 
 
 Within my breast there is no light, 
 But the cold light of stars ; 
 
 I give the first watch of the night 
 To the red planet Mars. 
 
 The star of the unconquered will, 
 He rises in my breast, 
 
 Serene, and resolute, and still, 
 And calm, and self-possessed. 
 
 And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 
 That readest this brief psalm, 
 
 As one by one thy hopes depart, 
 Be resolute and calm. 
 
 O fear not in a world like this, 
 
 And thou shalt know ere long, 
 
 Know how sublime a thing it is 
 To suffer and be strong.
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS. 
 
 WHEN the hours of Day are numbered, 
 And the voices of the Night 
 
 Wake the better soul, that slumbered, 
 To a holy, calm delight ; 
 
 Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
 And, like phantoms grim and tall, 
 
 Shadows from the fitful fire-light 
 Dance upon the parlour wall ; 
 
 Then the forms of the departed 
 
 Enter at the open door ; 
 The beloved, the true-hearted, 
 
 Come to visit me once more ; 
 
 He, the young and strong, who cherished 
 Noble longings for the strife, 
 
 By the road-side fell and perished, 
 Weary with the march of life ! 
 
 They, the holy ones and weakly, 
 
 Who the cross of suffering bore, 
 
 Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
 Spake with us on earth no more !
 
 FOOTSTEPS OF AXGELS. 15 
 
 And with them the Being Beauteous, 
 Who unto my youth was given, 
 
 More than all things else to love me, 
 And is now a saint in heaven. 
 
 With a slow and noiseless footstep 
 Comes that messenger divine, 
 
 Takes the vacant chair heside me, 
 Lays her gentle hand in mine. 
 
 And she sits and gazes at me 
 
 "With those deep and tender eyes, 
 
 Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 
 Looking downward from the skies. 
 
 Uttered not, yet comprehended, 
 Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, 
 
 Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 
 Breathing from her lips of air. 
 
 O, though oft depressed and lonely, 
 All my fears are laid aside, 
 
 If I but remember only 
 
 Such as these have lived and died !
 
 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 SPAKE full well, in language quaint and olden, 
 One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, 
 
 When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, 
 Stars that in earth's firmament do shine. 
 
 Stars they are, wherein we read our history, 
 
 As astrologers and seers of eld ; 
 Yet not wrapped about with awful mystery, 
 
 Like the burning stars, which they beheld. 
 
 Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, 
 God hath written in those stars above ; 
 
 But not less in the bright flowerets under us 
 Stands the revelation of His love. 
 
 Bright and glorious is that revelation, 
 
 Written all over this great world of ours ; 
 
 Making evident our own creation, 
 
 In these stars of earth, ->- these golden flowers.
 
 And the Poet, faithful and far-seeing, 
 
 Sees, alike in stars and flowers, a part 
 
 Of the self-same, universal being, 
 
 Which is throbbing in his brain and heart. 
 
 Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, 
 Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day. 
 
 Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, 
 Buds that open only to decay : 
 
 Brilliant hopes, all woven in gorgeous tissues. 
 
 Flaunting gayly in the golden light ; 
 Large desires, with most uncertain issues, 
 
 Tender wishes, blossoming at night ! 
 
 These in flowers and men are more than seeming ; 
 
 Workings are they of the self-same powers, 
 Which the Poet, in no idle dreaming, 
 
 Seeth in himself and in the flowers. 
 
 Everywhere about us are they glowing, 
 
 Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born ; 
 
 Others, their blue eyes with tears o'erflowing, 
 Stand like Ituth amid the golden corn ; 
 
 Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing, 
 
 And in Summer's green-emblazoned field, 
 
 But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing, 
 In the centre of his brazen shield ; 
 
 D
 
 18 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 Not alone in meadows and green alleys, 
 
 On the mountain-top, and by the brink 
 
 Of sequestered pools in woodland valleys, 
 
 Where the slaves of Nature stoop to drink ; 
 
 Not alone in her vast dome of glory, 
 
 Not on graves of bird and beast alone, 
 
 But in old cathedrals, high and hoary, 
 
 On the tombs of heroes, carved in stone ; 
 
 In the cottage of the rudest peasant, 
 
 In ancestral homes, whose crumbling towers. 
 Speaking of the Past unto the Present, 
 
 Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers ; 
 
 In all places, then, and in all seasons. 
 
 Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings, 
 Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons, 
 
 How akin they are to human things. 
 
 And with childlike, credulous affection 
 We behold their tender buds expand ; 
 
 Emblems of our own great resurrection, 
 
 Emblems of the bright and better land.
 
 THE BELEAGUERED CITY. 
 
 I HAVE read, in some old marvellous tale, 
 Some legend strange and vague, 
 
 That a midnight host of spectres pale 
 Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 
 
 Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, 
 With the wan moon overhead, 
 
 There stood, as in an awful dream, 
 The army of the dead. 
 
 White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 
 The spectral camp was seen, 
 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 The river flowed between. 
 
 No other voice nor sound was there, 
 No drum, nor sentry's pace ; 
 
 The mist-like banners clasped the air, 
 As clouds with clouds embrace. 
 
 But, when the old cathedral bell 
 
 Proclaimed the morning prayer, 
 
 The white pavilions rose arid fell 
 On the alarmed air.
 
 20 VOICES OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 Down the broad valley fast and far 
 
 The troubled army fled ; 
 Up rose the glorious morning star, 
 
 The ghastly host was dead. 
 
 I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, 
 That strange and mystic scroll, 
 
 That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
 Beleaguer the human soul. 
 
 Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, 
 
 In Fancy's misty light, 
 Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 
 
 Portentous through the night. 
 
 Upon its midnight battle-ground 
 
 The spectral camp is seen, 
 And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
 
 Flows the River of Life between. 
 
 No other voice, nor sound is there, 
 
 In the army of the grave ; 
 No other challenge breaks the air, 
 
 But the rushing of Life's wave. 
 
 And, when the solemn and deep church-bell 
 
 Entreats the soul to pray. 
 The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 
 
 The shadows sweep away.
 
 MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR. 21 
 
 Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
 
 The spectral camp is fled ; 
 Faith shineth as a morning star, 
 
 Our ghastly fears are dead. 
 
 MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR. 
 
 YES, the Year is growing old, 
 
 And his eye is pale and bleared ! 
 
 Death, with frosty hand and cold, 
 Plucks the old man by the beard. 
 Sorely, sorely ! 
 
 The leaves are falling, falling, 
 
 Solemnly and slow ; 
 Caw ! caw ! the rooks are calling, 
 
 It is a sound of woe, 
 
 A sound of woe ! 
 
 Through woods and mountain passes 
 The winds, like anthems, roll ; 
 
 They are chanting solemn masses, 
 
 Singing ; " Pray for this poor soul, 
 Pray, pray ! " 
 
 And the hooded clouds, like friars, 
 Tell their beads in drops of rain, 
 
 And patter their doleful prayers ; 
 But their prayers arc all in vain, 
 All in vain !
 
 22 VOICKS OF THE NIGHT. 
 
 There he stands in the foul weather, 
 
 The foolish, fond Old Year, 
 Crowned with wild flowers and with heather, 
 
 Like weak, despised Lear, 
 A king, a king- ! 
 
 Then conies the rammer-like day, 
 
 Bids the old man rejoice ! 
 His joy ! his last! O, the old man gray, 
 
 Loveth that ever-soft voice, 
 Gentle and low. 
 
 To the crimson woods he saith, 
 
 To the voice gentle and low 
 Of the soft ah-, like a daughter's breath, 
 
 " Pray do not mock me so ! 
 Do not laugh at me !" 
 
 And now the sweet day is dead ; 
 
 Cold in his arms it lies ; 
 Xo stain from its breath is spread 
 
 Over the glassy skies, 
 
 Xo mist or stain ! 
 
 Then, too. the Old Year dieth, 
 And the forests utter a moan, 
 
 Like the voice of one who crieth 
 In the wilderness alone, 
 
 "Vex not his ghost!"
 
 MIDNIGHT MASS FOR THE DYING YEAR. 
 
 Then comes, with an awful roar. 
 Gathering and sounding on. 
 
 The storm-wind from Labrador, 
 The -wind Euroclydon, 
 The storm- wind ! 
 
 Howl ! howl ! and from the forest 
 Sweep the red leaves away ! 
 
 Would, the sins that thou abhorrest, 
 O Soul ! could thus decay, 
 And be swept away ! 
 
 For there shall come a mightier blast, 
 
 There shall be a darker day ; 
 And the stars, from heaven down-cast. 
 Like red leaves be swept away ! 
 Kyrie, eleyson ! 
 Christe, elevson !
 
 I/ENVOI. 
 
 YE voices, that arose 
 
 After the Evening's close, 
 
 And whispered to my restless heart repose ! 
 
 Go, breathe it in the ear 
 
 Of all who douht and fear, 
 
 And say to them, " Be of good cheer ! " 
 
 Ye sounds, so low and calm, 
 
 That in the groves of balm 
 
 Seemed to me like an angel's psalm ! 
 
 Go, mingle yet once more 
 
 With the perpetual roar 
 
 Of the pine forest, dark and hoar ! 
 
 Tongues of the dead, not lost, 
 But speaking from death's frost, 
 Like fiery tongues at Pentecost ! 
 
 Glimmer, as funeral lamps, 
 Amid the chills and damps 
 Of the vast plain where Death encamps !
 
 THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE.
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 As one who, walking in the twilight gloom, 
 
 Hears round about him voices as it darkens, 
 
 And seeing not the forms from which they come, 
 
 Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens: 
 
 So walking here in twilight, O my friends ! 
 
 I hear your voices, softened by the distance, 
 And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends 
 
 His words of friendship, comfort, and assistance. 
 
 If any thought of mine, or sung or told, 
 Has ever given delight or consolation, 
 
 Ye have repaid me back a thousand fold, 
 By every friendly sign and salutation. 
 
 Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown ! 
 
 Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, 
 That teaches me, when seeming most alone, 
 
 Friends arc around us, though no word be spoken. 
 
 Kind messages, that pass from land to land ; 
 
 Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, 
 In which we feel the pressure of a hand, 
 
 One touch of fire, and all the rest is mystery !
 
 as DEDICATION. 
 
 The pleasant books, that silently among 
 
 Our household treasures take familiar places, 
 
 And are to us as if a living tongue 
 
 Spake from the printed leaves or pictured faces ! 
 
 Perhaps on earth I never shall behold, 
 
 With eye of sense, your outward form and semblance ; 
 Therefore to me ye never will grow old, 
 
 But live for ever young in my remembrance. 
 
 Never grow old, nor change, nor pass away ! 
 
 Your gentle voices will flow on for ever, 
 When life grows bare and tarnished with decay, 
 
 As through a leafless landscape flows a river. 
 
 Not chance of birth or place has made us friends, 
 
 Being oftentimes of different tongues and nations, 
 
 But the endeavour for the selfsame ends, 
 
 AVith the same hopes, and fears, and aspirations. 
 
 Therefore I hope to join your seaside walk, 
 
 Saddened, and mostly silent, Avith emotion ; 
 
 Not interrupting with intrusive talk 
 
 The grand, majestic symphonies of ocean. 
 
 Therefore I hope, as no unwelcome guest, 
 
 At your warm fireside, when the lamps are lighted. 
 To have my place reserved among the rest, 
 
 Xor stand as one unsought and uninvited.
 
 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 S 'THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 
 
 BUILD inc straight, O worthy Master ! 
 
 Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, 
 That shall laugh at all disaster, 
 
 And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! 
 
 The merchant's word 
 
 Delighted the Master heard ; 
 
 For his heart was in his work, and the heart 
 
 Give th grace unto every Art.
 
 30 HY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 A quiet smile played round his lips, 
 As the eddies and dimples of the tide 
 Play round the bows of ships, 
 That steadily at anchor ride. 
 And with a voice that was full of glee, 
 He answered, " Ere long we will launch 
 A vessel as goodly, and strong, and staunch, 
 As ever weathered a wintry sea ! " 
 
 And first with nicest skill and art, 
 Perfect and finished in every part, 
 A little model the Master wrought, 
 Which should be to the larger plan 
 What the child is to the man, 
 Its counterpart in miniature ; 
 That with a hand more swift and sure 
 The greater labour might be brought 
 To answer to his inward thought. 
 And as he laboured, his mind ran o'er 
 The various ships that were built of j'ore, 
 And above them all, and strangest of all 
 Towered the Great Harry, crank and tall, 
 Whose picture was hanging on the wall, 
 With bows and stern raised high in air. 
 And balconies hanging here and there. 
 And signal lanterns and flags afloat, 
 And eight round towers, like those that frowi 
 From some old castle, looking down 
 Upon the drawbridge and the moat.
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 31 
 
 And he said with a smile, ' OUP ship, 1 wis, 
 Shall he of another form than this ! " 
 
 It was of another form, indeed; 
 
 Built for freight, and yet for speed, 
 
 A hcautiful and gallant craft : 
 
 Broad in the beam, that the stress of the blast, 
 
 Pressing' down upon sail and mast, 
 
 Might not the sharp bows overwhelm ; 
 
 Broad in the beam, but sloping aft 
 
 With graceful curve and slow degrees, 
 
 That she might be docile to the helm, 
 
 And that the currents of parted seas, 
 
 Closing behind, with mighty force, 
 
 Might aid and not impede her course. 
 
 In the ship-yard stood the Master, 
 
 With the model of the vessel, 
 That should laugh at all disaster, 
 
 And with wave and whirlwind wrestle! 
 
 Covering many a rood of ground, 
 Lay the timber piled around ; 
 Timber of chesnut, and elm, and oak, 
 And scattered here and there, with these, 
 The knarred and crooked cedar knees ; 
 Brought from regions far away, 
 From Pascagoula's sunny bay, 
 And the banks of the roaring Roanoke !
 
 32 THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 Ah ! what a wondrous thing it is 
 
 To note how many wheels of toil 
 
 One thought, one word, can set in motion 
 
 There's not a ship that sails the ocean. 
 
 But every climate, every soil, 
 
 Must bring its tribute, great or small. 
 
 And help to build the wooden wall ! 
 
 The sun was rising o'er the sea, 
 
 And long the level shadows lay. 
 
 As if they, too, the beams would be 
 
 Of some great airy argosy, 
 
 Framed and launched in a single day. 
 
 That silent architect, the sun, 
 
 Had hewn and laid them every one, 
 
 Ere the work of man was yet begun. 
 
 Beside the Master, when he spoke. 
 
 A youth, against an anchor leaning, 
 
 Listened, to catch his slightest meaning, 
 
 Only the long waves, as they broke 
 
 In ripples on the pebbly beach, 
 
 Interrupted the old man's speech. 
 
 Beautiful they were, in sooth, 
 The old man and the fiery youth ! 
 The old man, in whose busy brain 
 Many a ship that sailed the main 
 Was modelled o'er and o'er again ;- - 
 The fiery youth, who was to be 
 The heir of his dexterity,
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 
 
 The heir of his house, and his daughter's hand, 
 When he had built and launched from land 
 What the elder head had planned. 
 
 " Thus," said he, " will we build this ship ! 
 Lay square the blocks upon the slip, 
 And follow well this plan of mine. 
 Choose the timbers with greatest care ; 
 Of all that is unsound beware ;
 
 34 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 For only what is sound and strong 
 
 To this vessel shall belong. 
 
 Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine 
 
 Here together shall combine. 
 
 A goodly frame, and a goodly fame, 
 
 And the UNION be her name ! 
 
 For the day that gives her to the sea 
 
 Shall give my daughter unto thee ! " 
 
 The Master's word 
 
 Enraptured the young man heard ; 
 
 And as he turned his face aside, 
 
 With a look of joy and a thrill of pride, 
 
 Standing before 
 
 Her father's door, 
 
 He saw the form of his promised bride. 
 
 The sun shone on her golden hair, 
 
 And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, 
 
 AVith the breath of morn and the soft sea air. 
 
 Like a beauteous barge was she, 
 
 Still at rest on the sandy beach, 
 
 Just beyond the billow's reach ; 
 
 But he 
 
 Was the restless, seething, stormy sea ! 
 
 Ah, how skilful grows the hand 
 That obeyeth Love's command ! 
 It is the heart, and not the brail 
 That to the highest doth attain,
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 
 
 And he who followcth Love's behest 
 Far execcdeth all the rest ! 
 
 Thus with the rising of the sun 
 
 AVas the noble task begun, 
 
 And soon throughout the ship-yard's bound* 
 
 Were heard the intermingled sounds 
 
 Of axes and of mallets, plied 
 
 With vigorous arms on every side ; 
 
 Plied so deftly and so welT, 
 
 That, ere the shadows of evening fell, 
 
 The keel of oak for a noble ship, 
 
 Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong, 
 
 Was lying ready, and stretched along 
 
 The blocks, well placed upon the slip. 
 
 Happy, thrice happy, every one 
 
 Who sees his labour well begun, 
 
 And not perplexed and multiplied, 
 
 l?y idly waiting for time and tide ! 
 
 And when the hot, long day was o 'er, 
 The young man at the Master's door 
 Sat with the maiden calm and still. 
 And within the porch, a little more 
 llemoved beyond the evening chill, 
 The father sat, and told them tales 
 Of wrecks in the great September gales, 
 Of pirates upon the Spanish Main, 
 And ships that never came back again,
 
 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 The chance and change of a sailor's life, 
 
 Want and plenty, rest and strife, 
 
 His roving- fancy, like the wind, 
 
 That nothing can stay and nothing can bind, 
 
 And the magic charm of foreign lands, 
 
 With shadows of palms, and shining sands, 
 
 Where the tumbling- surf, 
 
 O 'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, 
 
 Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar, 
 
 As he lies alone and asleep on the turf.
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 37 
 
 And the trembling maiden held her breath 
 At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea, 
 With all its terror and mystery, 
 The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death, 
 That divides and yet unites mankind ! 
 And whenever the old man paused, a gleam 
 From the bowl of his pipe would awhile illume 
 The silent group in the twilight gloom, 
 And thoughtful faces, as in a dream ; 
 And for a moment one might mark 
 What had been hidden by the dark, 
 That the head of the maiden lay at rest, 
 Tenderly, on the young man's breast! 
 
 Day by day the vessel grew, 
 
 With timbers fashioned strong and true, 
 
 Stemson and keeelson and sternson-knee, 
 
 Till, framed with perfect symmetry, 
 
 A skeleton ship rose up to view ! 
 
 And around the bows and along the side 
 
 The heavy hammers and mallets plied, 
 
 Till after many a week, at length, 
 
 Wonderful for form and strength, 
 
 Sublime in its enormous bulk, 
 
 Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk ! 
 
 And around it columns of smoke, upwreathing, 
 
 Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething 
 
 Caldron, that glowed, 
 
 And overflowed 
 
 With the black tar, heated for the sheathing.
 
 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 And amid the clamours 
 
 Of clattering hammers, 
 
 He who listened heard now and then 
 
 The song of the Master and his men : 
 
 " Build me straight, O worthy Master, 
 Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, 
 
 That, shall laugh at all disaster, 
 
 And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! 
 
 With oaken brace and copper band, 
 Lay the rudder on the sand,
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 39 
 
 That, like a thought, should have control 
 
 Over the movement of the whole ; 
 
 And near it the anchor, whose giant hand 
 
 Would reach down and grapple with the land, 
 
 And immovable and fast 
 
 Hold the great ship against the bellowing blast ! 
 
 And at the bows an image stood, 
 
 By a cunning artist carved in wood, 
 
 With robes of white, that far behind 
 
 Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. 
 
 It was not shaped in a classic mould, 
 
 Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old, 
 
 Or Naiad rising from the water, 
 
 But modelled from the Master's daughter ! 
 
 On many a dreary and misty night, 
 
 "P will be seen by the rays of the signal light, 
 
 Speeding along through the rain and the dark, 
 
 Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, 
 
 The pilot of some phantom bark, 
 
 Guiding the vessel, in its flight, 
 
 By a path none other kno\vs aright ! - 
 
 Behold, at last, 
 
 Each tall and tapering mast 
 
 Is swung into its place ; 
 
 Shrouds and stays 
 
 Holding it firm and fast ! 
 
 Long ago, 
 
 In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, 
 When upon mountain and plain 
 Lav the snow,
 
 40 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 They fell, those lordly pines ! 
 
 Those grand, majestic pines ! 
 
 'Mid shouts and cheers 
 
 The jaded steers, 
 
 Panting beneath the goad, 
 
 Dragged down the weary, winding road 
 
 Those captive kings so straight and tall, 
 
 To be shorn of their streaming hair, 
 
 And, naked and bare, 
 
 To feel the stress and the strain 
 
 Of the wind and the reeling main, 
 
 Whose roar 
 
 Would remind them for evermore 
 
 Of their native forests they should not see again. 
 
 And everywhere 
 
 The slender, graceful spars 
 
 Poise aloft in the air, 
 
 And at the mast head, 
 
 White, blue, and red, 
 
 A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. 
 
 Ah ! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, 
 
 In foreign harbours shall behold 
 
 That flag unrolled, 
 
 'T will be as a friendly hand 
 
 Stretched out from his native land, 
 
 Filling his heart with memories sweet and endless ! 
 
 All is finished ! and at length 
 Has come the bridal day 
 Of beauty and of strength.
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 
 
 To-day the vessel shall be launched ! 
 With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, 
 And o'er the hay, 
 
 Slowly, in all his splendours dight, 
 The great sun rises to behold the sight. 
 
 "The ocean old, 
 Centuries old, 
 
 Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, 
 Paces restless to and fro, 
 Up and down the sands of gold. 
 His beating heart is not at rest ; 
 And far and wide, 
 With ceaseless flow, 
 His beard of snow 
 
 Heaves with the heaving of his breast. 
 He waits impatient for his bride. 
 There she stands, 
 With her foot upon the sands, 
 Decked with flags and streamers gay, 
 In honour of her marriage day, 
 Her snow-white signals fluttering, blending, 
 Round her like a veil descending, 
 Ready to be 
 The bride of the gray, old sea. X 
 
 On the deck another bride 
 
 Is standing by her lover's side.
 
 42 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Shadows from the flags and shrouds. 
 Like the shadows cast by clouds, 
 Broken by many a sunny fleck, 
 Fall around them on the deck. 
 
 The prayer is said, 
 
 The service read, 
 
 The joyous bridegroom bows his head ; 
 
 And in tears the good old Master 
 
 Shakes the brown hand of his son, 
 
 Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek 
 
 In silence, for he cannot speak, 
 
 And ever faster 
 
 Down his own the tears begin to run. 
 
 The worthy pastor 
 
 The shepherd of that wandering flock, 
 
 That has the ocean for its wold, 
 
 That has the vessel for its fold. 
 
 Leaping ever from rock to rock 
 
 Spake, with accents mild and clear. 
 
 AVords of warning, words of cheer, 
 
 But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. 
 
 He knew the chart 
 
 Of the sailor's heart, 
 
 All its pleasures and its griefs, 
 
 All its shallows and rocky reefs, 
 
 All those secret currents, that flow 
 
 With such resistless undertow, 
 
 And lift and drift, with terrible force, 
 
 The will from its moorings and its course. 
 
 Therefore he spake, and thus said he :
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 43 
 
 Like unto ships far oft' at sea, 
 
 Outward or homeward bound, are we. 
 
 Before, behind, and all around, 
 
 Floats and swings the horizon's bound, 
 
 Seems at its distant rim to rise 
 
 And climb the crystal Avail of the skies, 
 
 And then again to turn and sink, 
 
 As if we could slide from its outer brink. 
 
 Ah ! it is not the sea, 
 
 It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, 
 
 But oui'selves 
 
 That rock and rise 
 
 With endless and uneasy motion, 
 
 Now touching the very skies, 
 
 Now sinking into the depths of ocean. 
 
 Ah ! if oui' souls but poise and swing 
 
 Like the compass in its brazen ring, 
 
 Ever level and ever true 
 
 To the toil and the task we have to do, 
 
 We shall sail securely, and safely reach 
 
 The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach 
 
 The sights we see, and the sounds we hear, 
 
 Will be those of joy and not of fear ! " 
 
 Then the Master, 
 
 With a gesture of command, 
 
 Waved his hand ; 
 
 And at the word, 
 
 Loud and sudden there was heard, 
 
 All around them and below, 
 
 The sound of hammers, blow on blow,
 
 44 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Knocking away the shores and spurs. 
 
 And see ! she stirs ! 
 
 She starts. she moves.- she seems to feel 
 
 The thrill of life along her keel, 
 
 And, spurning with her foot the ground, 
 
 With one exulting, joyous bound, 
 
 She leaps into the ocean's arms ! 
 
 And lo ! from the assembled crowd 
 
 There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, 
 
 That to the ocean seemed to say, 
 
 " Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, 
 
 Take her to thy protecting arms, 
 
 AVith all her youth and all her charms ! "
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 
 
 How beautiful she is ! How fail- 
 She lies within those arms, that press 
 Her form with many a soft caress 
 Of tenderness and watchful care ! 
 Sail forth into the sea, O ship ! 
 Through wind and wave, light onward steer ! 
 The moistened eye, the trembling lip, 
 Are not the signs of doubt or fear. 
 
 Sail forth into the sea of life, 
 O gentle, loving, trusting wife. 
 And safe from all adversity 
 Upon the bosom of that sea 
 Thy comings and thy goings be ! 
 For gentleness and love and trust 
 Prevail o'er angry wave and gust ; 
 And in the wreck of noble lives 
 Something immortal still survives ! 
 
 Thou, too, sail on, Ship of State ! 
 Sail on, O UNION, strong and great ! 
 Humanity with all its fears, 
 With all the hopes of future years, 
 Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
 We know what Master laid thy keel, 
 What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel, 
 AVho made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
 What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
 In what a forge and what a heat 
 AVi>re shaped the anchors of thy hope !
 
 4f> BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Fear not each sudden sound and shock. 
 
 T is of the wave and not the rock : 
 
 T is but the flapping of the sail, 
 
 And not a rent made by the gale ! 
 
 In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
 
 In spite of false lights on the shore, 
 
 Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
 
 Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears. 
 
 Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
 
 Are all with thec, are all with thec ! 
 
 THE EVENING STAR. 
 
 JUST above yon sandy bar, 
 
 As the day grows fainter and dimmer, 
 Lonely and lovely, a single star 
 
 Lights the air with a dusky glimmer. 
 
 Into the ocean faint and far 
 
 Falls the trail of its golden splendour, 
 And the gleam of that single star 
 
 Is ever refulgent, soft, and tender. 
 
 Chrysaor rising out of the sea, 
 
 Showed thus glorious and thus emulous,
 
 THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP. 4' 
 
 Leaving the arms of Callirrhoe, 
 
 For ever tender, soft, and tremulous. 
 
 Thus o'er the ocean faint and far 
 
 Trailed the gleam of his falchion brightly 
 Is it a God, or is it a star 
 
 That, entranced, I gaze on nightly ! 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 AH ! What pleasant visions haunt me 
 As I gaze upon the sea ! 
 
 All the old romantic legends, 
 
 All my dreams, come back to me. 
 
 Sails of silk and ropes of sendal, 
 Such as gleam in ancient lore ; 
 
 And the singing of the sailors, 
 
 And the answer from the shore !
 
 48 BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Most of all, the Spanish ballad 
 
 Haunts me oft, and tarries long, 
 
 Of the noble Count Arnaldos 
 And the sailor's mystic song. 
 
 Like the long waves on a sea-beach, 
 Where the sand as silver shines, 
 
 With a soft, monotonous cadence, 
 
 Flow its unrhymed lyric lines ; 
 
 Telling how the Count Arnaldos, 
 With his hawk upon his hand. 
 
 Saw a fair and stately galley. 
 
 Steering onward to the land;- 
 
 How he heard the ancient helmsman 
 Chant a song so wild and clear, 
 
 That the sailing sea-bird slowly 
 Poised upon the mast to hear. 
 
 Till his soul was full of longing, 
 
 And he cried, with impulse strong, 
 
 " Helmsman ! for the love of heaven. 
 
 Teach me, too, that wondrous song ! '" 
 
 " Wouldst thou," so the helmsman answered, 
 
 " Learn the secret of the sea ? 
 Only those who brave its dangers 
 
 Comprehend its mystery ! "
 
 THE SECRET OF THE SEA. 
 
 In each sail that skiins the horizon, 
 In each landward-blowing breeze, 
 
 I behold that stately galley, 
 
 Hear those mournful melodies ; 
 
 Till my soul is full of longing 
 
 For the secret of the sea, 
 And the heart of the great ocean 
 
 Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 THE twilight is sad and cloudy, 
 The wind blows wild and free, 
 
 And like the wings of sea-birds 
 
 Flash the white caps of the sea. 
 
 But in the fisherman's cottage 
 There shines a ruddier light, 
 
 And a little face at the window 
 Peers out into the night.
 
 Close, close it is pressed to the window, 
 
 As if those childish eyes 
 "Were looking into the darkness, 
 
 To see some form arise. 
 
 And a woman's waving shadow 
 
 Is passing to and fro, 
 Now rising to the ceiling, 
 
 Now bowing and bending low. 
 
 What tale do the roaring ocean, 
 
 And the night-wind, bleak and wild, 
 
 As they beat at the crazy casement, 
 Tell to that little child ? 
 
 And why do the roaring ocean, 
 
 And the night- wind, wild and bleak, 
 
 As they beat at the heart of the mother, 
 Drive the colour from her cheek ?
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. 
 
 SOUTHWARD with fleet of ice 
 
 Sailed the corsair Death ; 
 Wild and fast blew the blast, 
 
 And the east- wind was his breath. 
 
 His lordly ships of ice 
 
 Glistened in the sun ; 
 On each side, like pennons wide, 
 
 Flashing crystal streamlets run. 
 
 His sails of white sea-mist 
 
 Dripped with silver rain ; 
 But where he passed there were cast 
 
 Leaden shadows o'er the main. 
 
 Eastward from Campobello 
 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed ; 
 
 Three days or more seaward he bore, 
 Then, alas ! the land-wind failed. 
 
 Alas ! the land-wind failed, 
 
 And ice-cold grew the night ; 
 
 And never more, on sea or shore, 
 
 Should Sir Humphrey sec the light.
 
 SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT. 53 
 
 He sat upon the deck, 
 
 The Book was in liis hand ; 
 " Do not fear ! Heaven is as near," 
 
 He said, " by water as by land ! " 
 
 In the first watch of the night, 
 
 Without a signal's sound, 
 Out of the sea, mysteriously, 
 
 The fleet of Death rose all around. 
 
 The moon and the evening star 
 Were hanging in the shrouds ; 
 
 Every mast, as it passed, 
 
 Seemed to rake the passing clouds. 
 
 They grappled with their prize, 
 At midnight black and cold ! 
 
 As of a rock was the shock ; 
 
 Heavily the ground-swell rolled. 
 
 Southward through day and dark, 
 They drift in close embrace, 
 
 With mist and rain, to the Spanish Main ; 
 Yet there seems no change of place. 
 
 Southward, for ever southward, 
 
 They drift through dark and day ; 
 
 And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream 
 Sinking, vanish all away.
 
 
 THE LIGHTHOUSE. 
 
 THE rocky ledge runs far into the sea, 
 
 And on its outer point, some miles away, 
 
 The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry, 
 
 A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day, 
 
 Even at this distance I can sec the tides, 
 
 Upheaving, break unheard along its base, 
 
 A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides 
 In the white lip and trcmour of the face.
 
 THE LIGHTHOUSE. 55 
 
 And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright, 
 
 Through the deep purple of the twilight air, 
 
 Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light 
 
 With strange, unearthly splendour in its glare ! 
 
 Xot one alone ; from each projecting cape 
 
 And perilous reef along the ocean's verge, 
 
 Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape, 
 
 Holding its lantern o'er the restless surge. 
 
 Like the great giant Christopher it stands 
 
 Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave, 
 
 Wuding far out among the rocks and sands, 
 The night-o'ertaken mariner to save. 
 
 And the great ships sail outward and return, 
 
 Bending and bowing o'er the billowy swells, 
 
 And ever joyful, as they see it burn, 
 
 They wave their silent welcomes and farewells. 
 
 They come forth from the darkness, and their sails 
 Gleam for a moment only in the blaze, 
 
 And eager faces, as the light unveils, 
 
 Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze. 
 
 
 The mariner remembers when a child, 
 
 On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink ; 
 And when, returning from adventures wild, 
 
 He saw it rise again o'er ocean's brink.
 
 M BY THE SEASIDE. 
 
 Steadfast, serene, immoveable, the same 
 
 Year after year, through all the silent night 
 
 Burns on for evermore that quenchless flame, 
 Shines on that inextinguishable light ! 
 
 It sees the ocean to its bosom clasp 
 
 The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace 
 It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp, 
 
 And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece. 
 
 The startled waves leap over it ; the storm 
 
 Smites it with all the scourges of the rain. 
 
 And steadily against its solid form 
 
 Press the great shoulders of the hurricane, j 
 
 The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din 
 Of wings and winds and solitary cries, 
 
 Blinded and maddened by the light within, 
 
 Dashes himself against the glare, and dies. 
 
 A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock, 
 Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove, 
 
 It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock, 
 But hails the mariner with words of love. 
 
 " Sail on !" it says, " sail on, ye stately ships ! 
 
 And with your floating bridge the ocean span 
 Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse, 
 
 Be yours to bring man nearer unto man ! "
 
 THE FIRE OF DRIFT-WOOD. 
 
 WE sat within the farm-house old, 
 
 Whose windows, looking o'er the bay, 
 
 Gave to the sea-breeze, damp and cold, 
 An easy entrance, night and day. 
 
 Not far away we saw the port, 
 
 The strange, old-fashioned, silent town, 
 The lighthouse, the dismantled fort, 
 
 The wooden houses, quaint and brown. 
 
 We sat and talked until the night, 
 Descending, filled the little room ; 
 
 Our faces faded from the sight, 
 
 Our voices only broke the gloom. 
 
 We spake of many a vanished scene, 
 
 Of what we once had thought and said, 
 
 Of what had been, and might have been, 
 
 And who was changed, and who was dead 
 
 And all that fills the hearts of friends, 
 
 When first they feel, with secret pain, 
 
 Their lives thenceforth have separate ends, 
 And never can be one again ; 
 
 The first slight swerving of the heart, 
 That words are powerless to express, 
 
 And leave it still unsaid in part, 
 Or say it in too great excess.
 
 58 BY THE FIKESIDE. 
 
 The very tones in which we spake 
 
 Had something strange, I could but mark ; 
 The leaves of memory seemed to make 
 
 A mournful rustling in the dark. 
 
 Oft died the words upon our lips, 
 
 As suddenly, from out the fire 
 Built of the wreck of stranded ships, 
 
 The flames would leap and then expire. 
 
 And, as their splendour flashed and failed, 
 We thought of wrecks upon the main, 
 
 Of ships dismasted, that were h ailed 
 And sent no answer back again. 
 
 The windows, rattling in their frames, 
 The ocean, roaring up the beach, 
 
 The gusty blast, the bickering flames, 
 All mingled vaguely in our speech ; 
 
 Until they made themselves a part 
 
 Of fancies floating through the brain, 
 
 The long-lost ventures of the heart. 
 That send no answers back again. 
 
 O flames that glowed ! O hearts that yearned ! 
 
 They were indeed too much akin, 
 The drift-wood fire without that burned, 
 
 The thoughts that burned and glowed within.
 
 BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 RESIGNATION. 
 
 THERE is no flock, however watched and tended, 
 
 But one dead lamb is there ! 
 Thei'e is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 
 
 But has one vacant chair !
 
 CO BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 The air is full of farewells to the dying', 
 
 And mournings for the dead ; 
 The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
 
 Will not be comforted. 
 
 Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
 
 Not from the gi-ound arise, 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 We sec but dimly through the mists and vapours : 
 
 Amid these earthly damps 
 What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 
 
 May be heaven's distant lamps. 
 
 There is no Death ! What seems so is transition ; 
 
 This life of mortal breath 
 Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 
 
 Whose portal we call Death. 
 
 She is not dead, the child of our affection, 
 
 But gone unto that school 
 Where she no longer needs our poor protection, 
 
 And Christ himself cloth rule. 
 
 In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion, 
 
 By guardian angels led, 
 Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, 
 
 She lives, whom we call dead.
 
 RESIGNATION. 61 
 
 Day after day we think what she is doing 
 
 In those bright realms of air ! 
 Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
 
 Behold her grown more fail 1 . 
 
 Thus do we w r alk with her, and keep unbroken 
 
 The bond which nature gives, 
 Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken, 
 
 May roach her where she lives. 
 
 Not as a child shall we again behold her ; 
 
 For when with raptures wild 
 In our embraces wo again enfold her, 
 
 She will not be a child ; 
 
 But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 
 
 Clothed with celestial grace ; 
 And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 
 
 Shall we behold her face. 
 
 And though at times impetuous with emotion, 
 
 And anguish long suppressed, 
 The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean, 
 
 That cannot be at rest, 
 
 We will be patient, and assuage the feeling 
 
 We may not wholly stay ; 
 By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 
 
 The grief that must have way.
 
 THE BUILDERS. 
 
 ALL are architects of Fate, 
 
 Working in these walls of Time ; 
 Some with massive deeds and great, 
 
 Some with ornaments of rhyme. 
 
 Nothing useless is, or low ; 
 
 Each thing in its place is best ; 
 And what seems hut idle show 
 
 Strengthens and supports the rest. 
 
 For the structure that we raise, 
 Time is with materials filled ; 
 
 Our to-days and yesterdays 
 
 Are the hlocks with which we huild. 
 
 Truly shape and fashion these ; 
 
 Leave no yawning gaps between ; 
 Think not, because no man sees, 
 
 Such things will remain unseen. 
 
 In the elder days of Art, 
 
 Builders wrought with greatest care 
 Each minute and unseen part ; 
 
 For the Gods see everywhere. 
 
 Let us do our work as well , 
 
 Both the unseen and the seen ;
 
 SAND OF THE DESERT. 
 
 Make the house where Gods may dwell, 
 Beautiful, entire, and clean. 
 
 Else our lives are incomplete, 
 
 Standing in these walls of Time, 
 
 Broken stairways, where the feet 
 Stumble as they seek to climb. 
 
 Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 
 With a firm and ample base ; 
 
 And ascending and secure 
 
 Shall to-morrow find its place. 
 
 Thus alone can we attain 
 
 To those turrets, where the eye 
 Sees the world as one vast plain, 
 
 And one boundless reach of sky. 
 
 OF THE DESERT IX AX HOUK-GLASS. 
 
 A HANDFUL of red sand, from the hot clime 
 
 Of Arab deserts brought, 
 AVithin this glass becomes the spy of Time, 
 
 The minister of Thought. 
 
 How many weary centuries has it been 
 About those deserts blown !
 
 ]$Y THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 How many strange vicissitudes has seen, 
 How many histories known ! 
 
 Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaclitc 
 
 Trampled and passed it o'er, 
 'When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight 
 
 His favourite son they bore. 
 
 Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare, 
 Crushed it beneath their tread ; 
 
 Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air 
 Scattered it as they sped ; 
 
 Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth 
 
 Held close in her caress, 
 Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith 
 
 Illumed the wilderness
 
 SAND OF THE DESERT. 65 
 
 Or anchorites beueath Engaddi's palms 
 
 Pacing the Red Sea beach, 
 And singing slow their old Armenian psalms 
 
 In half-articulate speech ; 
 
 Or caravans, that from Bassora's gate 
 
 With westward steps depart ; 
 Or Mecca's pilgrims, confident of Fate, 
 
 And resolute in heart ! 
 
 These have passed over it, or may have passed ! 
 
 Now in this crystal tower 
 Imprisoned by some curious hand at last, 
 
 It counts the passing hour. 
 
 And as I gaze, these narrow walls expand ; 
 
 Before my dreamy eye 
 Stretches the desert with its shifting sand, 
 
 Its unimpeded sky. 
 
 And borne aloft by the sustaining blast, 
 
 This little golden thread 
 Dilates into a column high and vast, 
 
 A form of fear and dread. 
 
 And onward, and across the setting sun, 
 
 Across the boundless plain, 
 The column and its broader shadow run, 
 
 Till thought pursues in vain.
 
 G6 BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 The vision vanishes ! These walls again 
 
 Shut out the lurid sun, 
 Shut out the hot, immeasurable plain ; 
 
 The half-hour's sand is run ! 
 
 BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 
 
 BLACK shadows fall 
 From the lindens tall, 
 That lift aloft their massive wall 
 Against the southern sky ; 
 
 And from the realms 
 Of the shadowy elms 
 A tide-like darkness overwhelms 
 The fields that round us lie. 
 
 But the night is fair, 
 And everywhere 
 
 A warm, soft, vapour nils the air, 
 And distant sounds seem near ; 
 
 And above, in the light 
 Of the star-lit night, 
 Swift birds of passage wing their night 
 Through the dewy atmosphere.
 
 BIRDS OF PASSAGE. 07 
 
 I hear the beat 
 Of their pinions fleet, 
 As from the land of snow and sleet 
 They seek a southern lea. 
 
 I hear the cry 
 Of their A'oices high 
 Falling dreamily through the sky, 
 But their forms I cannot see. 
 
 O, say not so ! 
 Those sounds that flow 
 In murmurs of delight and woe 
 Come not from wings of birds. 
 
 They are the throngs 
 Of the poet's songs, 
 
 Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, 
 The sound of winged words. 
 
 This is the cry 
 Of souls, that high 
 On toiling, beating pinions, fly, 
 Seeking a warmer clime. 
 
 From their distant flight 
 ThroTigh realms of light 
 It falls into our world of night, 
 
 With the murmuring sound of rhyme.
 
 BY THE FIKKSID! . 
 
 
 
 THE OPEN WINDOW. 
 
 THE old house by the lindens 
 Stood silent in the shade, 
 
 And on the gravelled pathway 
 The light and shadow played. 
 
 I saw the nursery windows 
 Wide open to the air ;
 
 THE OPEN AVINDOW. C9 
 
 Hut the faces of the children, 
 They were no longer there. 
 
 The large Newfoundland house-dog 
 Was standing by the door ; 
 
 He looked for his little playmates, 
 Who would return no more. 
 
 They walked not under the lindens, 
 They played not in the hall ; 
 
 But shadow, and silence, and sadness 
 Wei-e hanging over all. 
 
 The birds sang in the branches, 
 With sweet, familiar tone ; 
 
 But the voices of the children 
 
 Will be heard in dreams alone ! 
 
 And the boy that walked beside me, 
 He could not understand 
 
 Why closer in mine, ah ! closer, 
 I pressed his warm, soft hand !
 
 KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN. 
 
 WITLAF, a king of the Saxons, 
 Ere yet his last he breathed, 
 
 To the merry monks of Croyland 
 
 His drinking-horn bequeathed, 
 
 That, Avhenever they sat at their revels, 
 And drank from the golden bowl, 
 
 They might remember the donor, 
 
 And breathe a prayer for his soul. 
 
 So sat they once at Christmas, 
 And bade the goblet pass ; 
 
 In their beards the red wine glistened 
 Like dew-drops in the grass. 
 
 They drank to the soul of Witlaf, 
 They drank to Christ the Lord, 
 
 And to each of the Twelve Apostles, 
 Who had preached His holy word. 
 
 They drank to the Saints and Martyrs 
 Of the dismal days of yore, 
 
 And as soon as the horn was empty 
 They remembered one Saint more.
 
 KING AVITLAF'S URINKING-HORN. 71 
 
 And the reader droned from the pulpit, 
 Like the murmur of many bees, 
 
 The legend of good Saint Guthlac, 
 And Saint Basil's homilies ; 
 
 Till the great bells of the convent, 
 From their prison in the tower, 
 
 Guthlac and Bartholomoeus, 
 
 Proclaimed the midnight hour. 
 
 And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney, 
 And the Abbot bowed his head, 
 
 And the flamelets flapped and flickered, 
 But the Abbot was stark and dead. 
 
 Yet still in his pallid fingers 
 
 He clutched the golden bowl, 
 
 In Avhich, like a pearl dissolving, 
 
 Had sunk and dissolved his soul. 
 
 But not for this their revels 
 
 The jovial monks forbore, 
 For they cried, " Fill high the goblet ! 
 
 We must drink to one Saint more ! "
 
 GASPAR BECERRA. 
 
 By his evening fire the artist 
 
 Pondered o'er his secret shame ; 
 
 Baffled, weary, and disheartened, 
 
 Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 
 
 'T was an image of the Virgin 
 
 That had tasked his utmost skill ; 
 
 But alas ! his fair ideal 
 
 Vanished and escaped him still. 
 
 From a distant eastern island 
 
 Had the precious wood been brought ; 
 Day and night the anxious master 
 
 At his toil untiling wrought ; 
 
 Till, discouraged and desponding, 
 Sat he now in shadows deep, 
 
 And the day's humiliation 
 Found oblivion in sleep. 
 
 Then a voice cried, "Rise, O master! 
 
 From the burning brand of oak 
 Shape the thought that stirs within thee ! ' 
 
 And the startled artist woke,
 
 PEGASUS IN POTJND. 7 
 
 Woke, and from the smoking embers 
 
 Seized and quenched the glowing wood ; 
 
 And therefrom he carved an image, 
 And he saw that it was good. 
 
 O thou sculptor, painter, poet ! 
 
 Take this lesson to thy heart : 
 That is best which lieth nearest ; - 
 
 Shape from that thy work of art. 
 
 PEGASUS IN POUND. 
 
 ONCE into a quiet village, 
 
 Without haste and without heed, 
 In the golden prime of morning, 
 
 Strayed the poet's winged steed. 
 
 It was Autumn, and incessant 
 
 Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, 
 And, like living coals, the apples 
 
 Burned among the withering leaves. 
 
 Loud the clamorous bell was ringing 
 From its belfry gaunt and grim ; 
 
 T was the daily call to labour, 
 
 Not a triumph meant for him.
 
 74 BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 Not the less he saw the landscape, 
 In its gleaming vapour veiled ; 
 
 Not the less he breathed the odours 
 That the dying leaves exhaled. 
 
 Thus, upon the village common, 
 
 By the schoolboys he was found ; 
 
 And the wise men, in their wisdom, 
 Put him straightway into pound. 
 
 Then the sombre village crier, 
 Ringing loud his brazen bell, 
 
 Wandered down the street proclaiming 
 There was an estray to sell. 
 
 And the curious country people, 
 
 Rich and poor, and young and old, 
 
 Came in haste to see this wondrous 
 Winged steed, with mane of gold. 
 
 Thus the day passed, and the evening 
 Fell, with vapours cold and dim ; 
 
 But it brought no food nor shelter, 
 
 Brought no straw nor stall, for him. 
 
 Patiently, and still expectant, 
 
 Looked he through the wooden bars, 
 Saw the moon rise o'er the landscape, 
 
 Saw the tranquil, patient stars;
 
 PEGASUS IN POUND. 75 
 
 Till at length the bell at midnight 
 Sounded from its dark abode, 
 
 And, from out a neighbouring farm-yard, 
 Loud the cock Alectryon crowed. 
 
 Then, with nostrils wide distended, 
 Breaking from his iron chain, 
 
 And unfolding far his pinions, 
 
 To those stars he soared again. 
 
 On the morrow, when the village 
 Woke to all its toil and care, 
 
 Lo ! the strange steed had departed, 
 
 And they knew not when nor where. 
 
 But they found, upon the greensward 
 
 AVherc his struggling hoofs had trod, 
 
 Pure and bright, a fountain flowing 
 From the hoof-marks in the sod. 
 
 From that hour, the fount unfailing 
 Gladdens the whole region round, 
 
 Strengthening all who drink its waters, 
 While it soothes them with its sound.
 
 TEGNEBS DRAPA. 
 
 I HEARD a voice that cried, 
 " Balder the Beautiful 
 Is dead, is dead ! " 
 And through the misty air 
 Passed like the mournful cry 
 Of sunward sailing cranes. 
 
 I saw the pallid corpse 
 
 Of the dead sun 
 
 Borne through the Northern sky. 
 
 Blasts from Niffelheim 
 
 Lifted the sheeted mists 
 
 Around him as he passed. 
 
 And the voice for ever cried, 
 
 " Balder the Beautiful 
 
 Is dead, is dead ! " 
 
 And died away 
 
 Through the dreary night, 
 
 In accents of despair. 
 
 Balder the Beautiful, 
 God of the summer sun, 
 Fairest of all the gods ! 
 Light from his forehead beamed,
 
 TEGNERS DRAPA. 77 
 
 liunes were upon his tongue, 
 As on the warrior's sword. 
 
 All tilings in earth and air 
 Bound were by magic spell 
 Never to do him harm ; 
 Even the plants and stones ; 
 All save the mistletoe, 
 The sacred mistletoe ! 
 
 Haider, the blind old god, 
 AVhose feet are shod with silence, 
 Pierced through that gentle breast 
 "With his sharp spear, by fraud 
 Made of the mistletoe, 
 The accursed mistletoe ! 
 
 They laid him in his ship, 
 With horse and harness, 
 As on a funeral pyre. 
 Odin placed 
 A ring upon his finger, 
 And whispered in his ear. 
 
 They launched the burning ship ! 
 
 It floated far away 
 
 Over the misty sea, 
 
 Till like the sun it seemed, 
 
 Sinking beneath the waves. 
 
 Balder returned no more !
 
 78 BY THE FIRESIDE. 
 
 So perish the old gods ! 
 
 But out of the sea of Time 
 
 Rises a new land of song, 
 
 Fairer than the old. 
 
 Over its meadows green 
 
 Walk the young bards and sing. 
 
 Build it again, 
 
 O ye bards, 
 
 Fairer than before ! 
 
 Ye fathers of the new race, 
 
 Feed upon morning dew, 
 
 Sing the new Song of Love ! 
 
 The law of force is dead ! 
 The law of love prevails ! 
 Thor, the thunderer, 
 Shall rule the earth no more, 
 No more, with threats, 
 Challenge the meek Christ. 
 
 Sing no more, 
 O ye bards of the North, 
 Of Vikings and of Jarls ! 
 Of the days of Eld 
 1'rcscrvc the freedom only, 
 Not the deeds of blood !
 
 SONNET 
 
 O PRECIOUS evenings ! all too swiftly sped ! 
 
 Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages 
 
 Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages, 
 
 And giving tongues unto the silent dead ! 
 
 How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read, 
 
 Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages 
 
 Of the great poet who foreruns the ages, 
 
 Anticipating all that shall be said ! 
 
 O happy Reader ! having for thy text 
 
 The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught 
 
 The rarest essence of all human thought ! 
 
 () happy Poet ! by no critic vext ! 
 
 How must thy listening spirit now rejoice 
 
 To be interpreted by such a voice ! 
 
 THE SINGERS. 
 
 t 
 
 GOD sent his Singers upon earth 
 With songs of sadness and of mirth, 
 That they might touch the hearts of men, 
 And bring them back to heaven again. 
 
 The first a youth, with soul of fire, 
 Held in his hand a golden lyre ;
 
 BY THK FIKKSTDK. 
 
 Through groves lie wandered, and by streams, 
 Playing the music of our dreams. 
 
 The second, with a bearded face, 
 Stood singing in the market place, 
 And stirred with accents deep and loud 
 The hearts of all the listening crowd.
 
 THE SINGERS. 
 
 A gray, old man, the third and last, 
 Sang in cathedrals dim and vast, 
 While the majestic organ rolled 
 Contrition from its mouths of gold. 
 
 And those who heard the Singers three 
 Disputed which the best might be : 
 For still their music seemed to start 
 Discordant echoes in each heart.
 
 BY THE FIRKS1DE. 
 
 But the great Master said, " I see 
 
 No best in kind, but in degree ; 
 
 I gave a various gift to each, 
 
 To charm, to strengthen, and to teach. 
 
 " These are the three great chords of might, 
 And he whose ear is tuned aright 
 "Will hear no discord in the three, 
 But the most perfect harmony."
 
 SUSPIRIA. 
 
 TAKE them, O Death ! and bear away 
 Whatever thou canst call thine own ! 
 
 Thine image, stamped upon this clay, 
 Doth give thee that, but that alone ! 
 
 Take them, O Grave ! and let them lie 
 Folded upon thy narrow shelves, 
 
 As garments by the soul laid by, 
 And precious only to ourselves ! 
 
 Take them, O great Eternity ! 
 
 - Our little life is but a gust, 
 That bends the branches of thy tree, 
 
 And trails its blossoms in the dust ! _ 
 
 HYMX. 
 
 FOE MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION. 
 
 CHRIST to the young man said : " Yet one thing more ; 
 
 If thou wouldst perfect be, 
 Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, 
 
 And come and follow me ! "
 
 84 BY TIIK FIRESIDK. 
 
 "Within this temple Christ again, unseen. 
 
 Those sacred words hath said, 
 And His invisible hands to-day have been 
 
 Laid on a young man's head. 
 
 And evermore beside him on his way 
 The unseen Christ shall move, 
 
 That he may lean upon his arm and say, 
 "Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?" 
 
 Beside him at the marriage feast shall be, 
 To make the scene more fair ; 
 
 Beside him in the dark Geth.se.mane 
 Of pain and midnight player. 
 
 O holy trust ! O endless sense of rest ! 
 
 Like the beloved John 
 To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, 
 
 And thus to journey on !
 
 POEMS ON SLAVERY.
 
 The following poems, with one exception, were written at sea, in the 
 latter part of October, 1842. I had not then heard of Dr. Channing's death. 
 Since that event, the poem addressed to him is no longer appropriate. I have 
 decided, however, to let it remain as it was written, a feehle testimony of my 
 admiration for a great and good man.
 
 TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING. 
 
 THE pages of thy book I read, 
 
 And as I closed each one, 
 My heart, responding, ever said, 
 
 " Servant of God! well done ! " 
 
 Well done ! Thy words are great and bold ; 
 
 At times they seem to me, 
 Like Luther's in the days of old, 
 
 Half-battles for the free. 
 
 Go on, until this land revokes 
 
 The old and chartered Lie, 
 The feudal curse, whose whips and yokes 
 
 Insult humanity. 
 
 A voice is ever at thy side 
 
 Speaking in tones of might, 
 
 Like the prophetic voice, that cried 
 To John in Patmos, " Write ! "
 
 8 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Write ! and tell out this bloody tale ; 
 
 Record this dire eclipse, 
 This Day of Wrath, this Endless Wail, 
 
 This dread Apocalypse ! 
 
 THE SLAVE'S DREAM. 
 
 BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay, 
 
 His sickle in liis hand ; 
 His breast was bare, his matted hair 
 
 Was buried in the sand. 
 Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, 
 
 He saw his Native Land.
 
 THK SLAVES DREAM. 
 
 Wide through the landscape of liis dream? 
 
 The lordly Niger floAved ; 
 Beneath the palm trees on the plain 
 
 Once more a king he strode ; 
 And heard the tinkling caraA T ans 
 
 Descend the mountain road. 
 
 He saw once more his dark-eyed queen 
 
 Among her children stand ; 
 They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, 
 
 They held him by the hand! 
 A tear burst from the sleeper's lids 
 
 And fell into the sand. 
 
 And then at furious speed he rode 
 
 Along the Niger's bank ; 
 I lis bridle-reins were golden chains, 
 
 And, with a martial clank, 
 At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel 
 
 Smiting his stallion's flank. 
 
 Before him, like a blood-red flag, 
 
 The bright flamingoes flew ; 
 From morn till night he followed their flight. 
 
 O'er plains where the tamarind grew, 
 Till he saw the roofs of Caffrc huts, 
 
 And the ocean rose to view. 
 
 H
 
 90 POEMS ON SLAVEKY. 
 
 At night he heard the lion roar, 
 
 And the hyaena scream, 
 And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds 
 
 Beside some hidden stream ; 
 And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, 
 
 Through the triumph of his dream. 
 
 The forests, with their myriad tongues, 
 
 Shouted of liberty ; 
 And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud, 
 
 With a voice so wild and free, 
 That he started in his sleep and smiled 
 
 At their tempestuous glee. 
 
 He did not feel the driver's whip, 
 Nor the burning heat of day : 
 
 For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep 
 And his Lifeless body lay 
 
 A worn-out fetter, that the soul 
 Had broken and thrown away !
 
 THE GOOD PART, 
 
 SHE dwells by Great Kenhawa's side, 
 In valleys green and cool ; 
 
 And all her hope and all her pride 
 Are in the village school. 
 
 Her soul, like the transparent air 
 That robes the hills above, 
 
 Though not of earth, encircles there 
 All things with arms of love. 
 
 And thus she walks among her girls 
 With praise and mild rebukes ; 
 
 Subduing e'en rude village churls 
 By her angelic looks. 
 
 She reads to them at eventide 
 Of One who came to save ; 
 
 To cast the captive's chains aside, 
 And liberate the slave. 
 
 And oft the blessed time foretells 
 When all men shall be free ; 
 
 And musical, as silver bells, 
 
 Their falling chains shall be.
 
 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 And following her beloved Lord, 
 
 In decent poverty, 
 She makes her life one sweet record 
 
 And deed of charity. 
 
 For she was rich, and gave up all 
 To break the iron bands 
 
 Of those who waited in her hall, 
 And laboured in her lands. 
 
 Long since beyond the Southern Sea 
 Their outbound sails have sped, 
 
 While she, in meek humility, 
 Now earns her daily bread. 
 
 It is their prayers, which never cease, 
 That clothe her with such grace ; 
 
 Their blessing is the light of peace 
 That shines upon her face. 
 
 THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP 
 
 IN dark fens of the Dismal Swamp 
 
 The hunted Negro lay; 
 He saw the fire of the midnight camp, 
 And heard at times a horse's tramp 
 
 And a bloodhound's distant bay.
 
 THE SLAVE IN THE DISMAL SWAMP. 
 
 Where will-o'-the-wisps and glow-worms shine, 
 
 In bulrush and in brake ; 
 Where waving mosses shroud the pine, 
 And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine 
 
 Is spotted like the snake ; 
 
 Where hardly a human foot could pass, 
 
 Or a human heart would dare, 
 On the quaking turf of the green morass 
 He crouched in the rank and tangled grass, 
 
 Like a wild beast in his lair, 
 
 A poor old slave, infirm and lame ; 
 
 Great scars deformed his face ; 
 On his forehead he bore the brand of shame, 
 And the rags, that hid his mangled frame, 
 
 Were the livery of disgrace.
 
 94 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 All things above were bright and fair, 
 
 All things were glad and free ; 
 Lithe squirrels darted here and there, 
 And wild birds filled the echoing air 
 With songs of Liberty ! 
 
 On him alone was the doom of pain, 
 From the morning of his birth ; 
 On him alone the curse of Cain 
 Fell, like a flail on the garnered grain, 
 And struck him to the earth ! 
 
 THE SLAVE SINGING AT MIDNIGHT. 
 
 LOUD he sang the psalm of David ! 
 He, a Negro and enslaved, 
 Sang of Israel's victory, 
 Sang of Zion, bright and free. 
 
 In that hour, when night is calmest, 
 Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist, 
 In a voice so sweet and clear 
 That I could not choose but hear, 
 
 Songs of triumph, and ascriptions, 
 Such as reached the swart Egyptians, 
 AVhen upon the Red Sea coast 
 Perished Pharaoh and his host.
 
 THE WITNESSES. itf 
 
 And the voice of his devotion 
 Filled my soul with strange emotion ; 
 For its tones by turns were glad, 
 Sweetly solemn, wildly sad. 
 
 Paul and Silas, in their prison, 
 Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen, 
 And an earthquake's arm of might 
 Broke their dungeon gates at night. 
 
 But, alas ! what holy angel 
 Brings the Slave this glad evangel ? 
 And what earthquake's arm of might 
 Breaks his dungeon gates at night ? 
 
 THE WITNESSES. 
 
 IN Ocean's wide domains, 
 Half buried in the sands, 
 
 Lie skeletons in chains, 
 
 With shackled feet and hands. 
 
 Beyond the fall of dews, 
 
 Deeper than plummet lies, 
 
 Float ships, with all their crews, 
 No more to sink nor rise.
 
 % POEMS ON SLAVEKY. 
 
 There the black Slave-ship swims, 
 Freighted with human forms, 
 
 Whose fettered, fleshless limbs 
 Are not the sport of storms. 
 
 These are the bones of Slaves ; 
 
 They gleam from the abyss : 
 They cry, from yawning waves, 
 
 " We are the Witnesses ! " 
 
 Within Earth's wide domains 
 Are markets for men's lives ; 
 
 Their necks are galled with chains, 
 
 Their wrists are cramped with gyves. 
 
 ])ead bodies, that the kite 
 
 In deserts makes its prey ; 
 Murders, that with affright 
 
 Scare schoolboys from their play ! 
 
 All evil thoughts and deeds ; 
 
 Anger, and lust, and pride ; 
 The foulest, rankest weeds, 
 
 That choke Life's groaning tide ! 
 
 These are the woes of Slaves ; 
 
 They glare from the abyss ; 
 They cry, from unknown graves, 
 
 " We are the Witnesses ! "
 
 THE QUADROON GIRL. 
 
 THE Slaver in the broad lagoon 
 Lay moored with idle sail ; 
 
 He waited for the rising moon. 
 And for the evening gale. 
 
 Under the shore his boat was tied, 
 And all her listless crew 
 
 Watched the gray alligator slide 
 Into the still bayou.
 
 98 POEMS ON SLAVERY. 
 
 Odours of orange-flowers, and spice, 
 Reached them from time to time, 
 
 Like airs that breathe from Paradise 
 Upon a world of crime. 
 
 The Planter, under his roof of thatch, 
 Smoked thoughtfully and slow ; 
 
 The Slaver's thumb was on the latch, 
 He seemed in haste to go. 
 
 He said, " My ship at anchor rides 
 
 In yonder broad lagoon : 
 I only Avait the evening tides, 
 
 And the rising of the moon." 
 
 Before them, Avith her face upraised, 
 
 In timid attitude, 
 Like one half curious, half amazed, 
 
 A Quadroon maiden stood. 
 
 Her eyes were large, and full of light, 
 Her arms and neck were bare ; 
 
 Xo garment she wore save a kirtle bright, 
 And her OAvn long, raven hair. 
 
 And on her lips there played a smile 
 
 As holy, meek, and faint, 
 As lights in some cathedral aisle 
 
 The features of a saint.
 
 THE QUADROON GIRL. 91 
 
 "The soil is barren, the farm is old;'' 
 The thoughtful Planter said ; 
 
 Then looked upon the Slaver's gold, 
 And then upon the maid. 
 
 His heart within him was at strife 
 
 With such accursed gains ; 
 For he knew whose passions gave her life, 
 
 Whose blood ran in her veins. 
 
 But the voice of nature was too weak; 
 
 He took the glittering gold ! 
 Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek, 
 
 Her hands as icy cold. 
 
 The Slaver led her from the door, 
 
 He led her by the hand. 
 To be his slave and paramour 
 
 In a strange and distant land !
 
 THE WARNING. 
 
 BEWAKE! The Israelite of old, who tore 
 
 The lion in his path, when, poor and blind, 
 
 He saw the blessed light of heaven no more, 
 
 Shorn of liis noble strength and forced to grind 
 
 In prison, and at last led forth to be 
 
 A pander to Philistine revelry, 
 
 Upon the pillars of the temple laid 
 
 His desperate hands, and in its overthrow 
 
 Destroyed himself, and with him those who made 
 A cruel mockery of his sightless woe ; 
 
 The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all, 
 
 Expired, and thousands perished in the fall ! 
 
 There is a poor, blind Samson in this land, 
 
 Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel, 
 
 Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand, 
 And shake the pillars of this Commonweal, 
 
 Till the vast Temple of our liberties 
 
 A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.
 
 BALLADS, SONGS, AND SONNETS.
 
 THE SKELETON IX ARMOUR. 
 
 THE following Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the sea-shore 
 at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall 
 River, clad in broken and corroded armour ; and the idea occurred to me of 
 connecting it with the Round Tower at Xewport, generally known hitherto 
 as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their 
 early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the Mimoires de la Societe Eoyale des 
 Antiqitaires du Nord, for 1838-1839, says: 
 
 "There is no mistaking, in this instance, the style in which the more 
 ancient stone edifices of the North were constructed, the style which belongs 
 to the Roman or Ante- Gothic Architecture, and which, especially after the 
 time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy over the whole of the "West 
 and North of Europe, where it continued to predominate until the close of 
 the twelfth century ; that style, which some authors have, from one of its
 
 most striking characteristics, called the round arch style, the same which in 
 England is denominated Saxon and sometimes Norman architecture. 
 
 "On the ancient structure in Newport there are no ornaments remaining, 
 which might possibly have served to guide us in assigning the prohahle date 
 of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed arch, nor 
 any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier rather than of a later 
 period. From such characteristics as remain, however, we can scarcely form 
 any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded that all, who are 
 familiar with Old-Northern architecture, will concur, THAT THIS BUILDING 
 
 WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CEN- 
 TURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building only, and not 
 to the alterations that it subsequently received ; for there are several such 
 alterations in the upper part of the building which cannot be mistaken, and 
 which were most likely occasioned by its being adapted in modern times to 
 various uses, for example as the substructure of a windmill, and latterly as 
 a hay-magazine. To the same times may be referred the windows, the fire- 
 place, and the apertures made above the columns. That this building could 
 not have been erected for a windmill, is what an architect will easily 
 discern." 
 
 I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently well 
 established for the purpose of a ballad; though doubtless many an honest 
 citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the Round 
 Tower, will be ready to exclaim with Sancho : "God bless me! did I not 
 warn you to have a care of what you were doing, for that it was nothing but 
 a windmill ; and nobody could mistake it, but one who had the like in his 
 head."
 
 " SPEAK ! speak ! thou fearful guest ! 
 Who, with thy hollow breast 
 Still in rude armour drest, 
 
 Comest to daunt me ! 
 Wrapt not in Eastern balms, 
 But with thy fleshless palms 
 Stretched, as if asking alms, 
 
 Why dost thou haunt me ? "
 
 106 HALLADS. 
 
 Then, from those cavernous eyes 
 Pale flashes seem to rise, 
 As when the Northern skies 
 
 Gleam in December; 
 And, like the water's flow 
 Under December's snow, 
 Came a dull voice of woe 
 
 From the heart's chamber. 
 
 " I was a Viking old ! 
 
 My deeds, though manifold, 
 
 No Skald in song has told, 
 
 No Saga taught thee ! 
 Take heed, that in thy verse 
 Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
 Else dread a dead man's curse ! 
 
 For this I sought thee. 
 
 " Far in the Northern Land, 
 By the wild Baltic's strand, 
 I, with my childish hand, 
 
 Tamed the ger-falcon ; 
 And, with my skates fast bound, 
 Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, 
 That the poor whimpering hound 
 
 Trembled to walk on. 
 
 " Oft to his frozen lair 
 Tracked I the grisly bear, 
 While from my path the hare 
 Fled like a shadow ;
 
 THE SKELETON IN AKMOUR. 107 
 
 Oft through the forest dark 
 Followed the were-wolf 's bark, 
 Until the soaring lark 
 
 Sang from the meadow. 
 
 " But when I older grew, 
 Joining a corsair's crew, 
 O'er the dark sea I flew 
 
 With the marauders. 
 Wild was the life we led ; 
 Many the souls that sped, 
 Many the hearts that bled, 
 
 By our stern orders. 
 
 " Many a wassail-bout 
 Wore the long Winter out ; 
 Often our midnight shout 
 
 Set the cocks crowing, 
 As we the Berserk's tale 
 Measured in cups of ale, 
 Draining the oaken pail, 
 
 Filled to o'erflowing. 
 
 " Once as I told in glee 
 Tales of the stormy sea, 
 Soft eyes did gaze on me, 
 
 Burning yet tender ; 
 And as the white stars shine 
 On the dark Norway pine, 
 On that dark heart of mine 
 
 Fell their soft splendour.
 
 " I \voocd the blue-eyed maid, 
 Yielding, yet half afraid, 
 And in the forest's shade 
 
 Our vows were plighted. 
 Under its loosened vest 
 Fluttered her little breast, 
 Like birds within their nest 
 
 By the hawk frighted. 
 
 " Bright in her father's hall 
 Shields gleamed upon the wall, 
 Loud sang the minstrels all, 
 ('haunting his glory ;
 
 THE SKELETON IX AKMOUIl. KKJ 
 
 When of old Hildebrand 
 I asked his daughter's hand, 
 Mute did the minstrels stand 
 To hear my story. 
 
 While the brown ale he quaffed, 
 Loud then the champion laughed, 
 And as the wind-gusts waft 
 The sea-foam brightly, 
 So the loud laugh of scorn, 
 Out of those lips unshorn, 
 From the deep drinking-horn 
 Blew the foam lightly. 
 
 " She was a Prince's child, 
 
 I but a Viking wild, 
 
 And though she blushed and smiled, 
 
 I was discarded ! 
 Should not the dove so white 
 Follow the sea-mew's flight, 
 Why did they leave that night 
 
 Her nest unguarded ? 
 
 " Scarce had I put to sea, 
 Bearing the maid with me, 
 Fairest of all was she 
 
 Among the Norsemen ! 
 When on the white sea-strand, 
 Waving his armed hand, 
 Saw we old Hildebrand, 
 
 AVith twenty horsemen.
 
 " Then launched they to the blast, 
 Bent like a reed each mast, 
 Yet we were gaining fast, 
 
 When the wind failed us ; 
 And with a sudden flaw 
 Came round the gusty Skaw, 
 So that our foe we saw 
 
 Laugh as he hailed us. 
 
 " And as to catch the gale 
 Round veered the napping sail, 
 Death ! was the helmsman's hail, 
 
 Death without quarter ! 
 Mid-ships with iron keel 
 Struck we her ribs of steel ; 
 Down her black hulk did reel 
 
 Through the black water ! 
 
 " As with his wings aslant, 
 Sails the fierce cormorant, 
 Seeking some rocky haunt, 
 
 With his prey laden, 
 So toward the open main, 
 Beating to sea again, 
 Through the wild hurricane, 
 
 Bore I the maiden. 
 
 " Three weeks we westward bore, 
 And when the storm was o'er, 
 Cloud-like w T e saw the shore 
 Stretching to leeward ;
 
 THE SKELETON IX AKMOUR. Ill 
 
 There for my lady's bower 
 Built I the lofty tower, 
 Which, to this very hour, 
 Stands looking seaward. 
 
 " There lived we many years ; 
 Time dried the maiden's tears ; 
 She had forgot her fears, 
 
 She was a mother ; 
 Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
 Under that tower she lies ; 
 Xc'er shall the sun arise 
 
 On such another. 
 
 " Still grew my bosom then, 
 Still as a stagnant fen ! 
 Hateful to me were men, 
 
 The sun-light hateful ! 
 In the vast forest here, 
 Clad in my warlike gear, 
 Fell I upon my spear, 
 
 O, death was grateful ! 
 
 " Thus, seamed with many scars, 
 Bursting these prison bars, 
 Up to its native stars 
 
 My soul ascended ! 
 There from the flowing bowl 
 Deep drinks the warrior's soul, 
 Skoal ! to the Northland ! skoal .' "* 
 
 Thus the tale ended. 
 
 In Seandanavia this is the customary salutation when drinking a health. I have slightly changed 
 the orthography of the word, in order to preserve the correct pronunciation.
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 
 
 IT was the schooner Hesperus, 
 
 That sailed the wintry sea ; 
 And the skipper had taken his little daughter, 
 
 To bear him company. 
 
 Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, 
 Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 
 
 And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, 
 That ope in the month of May.
 
 THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS. 113 
 
 The skipper he stood beside the helm, 
 
 His pipe was in his mouth, 
 And he watched how the veering flaw did blow 
 
 The smoke now West, now South. 
 
 Then up and spake an old Sailor, 
 
 Had sailed the Spanish Main, 
 " I pray thee, put into yonder port, 
 
 For I fear a hurricane. 
 
 " Last night, the moon had a golden ring. 
 
 And to-night no moon we sec !" 
 The skipper, lie blew a whiff from his pipe. 
 
 And a scornful laugh laughed he. 
 
 Colder and louder blew the wind, 
 
 A gale from the Northeast : 
 The snow fell hissing in the brine, 
 
 And the billows frothed like yeast. 
 
 Down came the storm, and smote amain, 
 
 The vessel in its strength ; 
 She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed, 
 
 Then leaped her cable's length. 
 
 " Come hither ! come hither ! my little daughter, 
 
 And do not tremble so ; 
 For I can weather the roughest gale, 
 
 That ever wind did blow."
 
 lie wrapped her warm in hi* caman's coat 
 
 Against the stinging blast : 
 lie eut a rope from a broken spar, 
 
 And bound her to the mast. 
 
 ' O father ! I hear the church-bells ring, 
 
 O say, what may it be ? " 
 " Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast !" 
 
 And he steered for the open sea. 
 
 " () father ! I hear the sound of guns, 
 
 O say, what may it be ? " 
 ' Some ship in distress, that cannot live 
 
 In such an angry sea ! " 
 
 " O father ! I see a gleaming light, 
 
 O say, what may it be ?" 
 But the father answered never a word, 
 
 A frozen corpse was he. 
 
 Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark. 
 
 With his face turned to the skies, 
 The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow 
 
 On his fixed and glassy eyes. 
 
 Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed 
 
 That saved she might be ; 
 And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave, 
 
 On the Lake of Galilee.
 
 THE WRECK OF TIIK IIESPEKUS. IK 
 
 And fast through the midnight dark and drear 
 Through the whistling sleet and snow, 
 
 Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept 
 Towards the reef of Norman's AVoc. 
 
 And ever the fitful gusts between 
 A sound came from the land ; 
 
 It was the sound of the trampling surf, 
 On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. 
 
 The breakers were right beneath her bows. 
 
 She drifted a dreary wreck, 
 And a whooping billow swept the crew 
 
 Like icicles from her deck. 
 
 She struck where the white and fleecy wave* 
 
 Looked soft as carded wool, 
 Hut the cruel rocks, they gored her side 
 
 Like the horns of an angry bull. 
 
 I ler rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice. 
 
 AVith the masts went by the board ; 
 Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank. 
 
 Ho ! ho ! the breakers roared ! 
 
 At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 
 
 A fisherman stood aghast, 
 To see the form of a maiden fair, 
 
 Lashed close to a drifting mast.
 
 The salt sea was frown on her breast, 
 
 The salt tears in her eyes ; 
 And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed 
 
 On the billows fall and rise. 
 
 Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 
 In the midnight and the snow ! 
 
 Christ save us all from a death like this. 
 On the reef of Norman's Woe ! 

 
 SEAWEED. 
 
 WHEN descends on the Atlantic 
 
 The gigantic 
 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 
 The toiling surges, 
 Laden with seaweed from the rocks :
 
 From Bermuda's reefs; from edges 
 
 Of sunken ledges, 
 In some far-off, bright Azore : 
 From Bahama, and the dashing. 
 
 Silver-flashing 
 Surges of San Salvador ; 
 
 From the tumbling surf, that buries 
 The Orkncyan skerries, 
 
 Answering the hoarse Hebrides : 
 
 And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 
 Spars, uplifting 
 
 On the desolate, rainy seas : 
 
 Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 
 On the shifting 
 Curl-cuts of the restless main ; 
 Till in sheltered coves, and readies 
 
 Of sandy beaches, 
 All have found repose again. 
 
 So when storms of wild emotion 
 
 Strike the ocean 
 Of the poet's soul, ere long 
 From each cave and rocky fastness, 
 
 In its vastness, 
 Floats some fragment of a song : 
 
 From the far-off isles enchanted. 
 
 Heaven has planted 
 \Vith the golden fruit of Truth :
 
 TIIK DAY IS DONK. 1 1!) 
 
 From tin- Hushing surf, Avhosc vision 
 
 Gleams Elysian 
 In the tropic clime of Youth; 
 
 From the strong Will, and the Endeavour 
 
 That forever 
 
 Wrestles with the tides of Fate : 
 From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered, 
 
 Tempest-shattered, 
 Floating waste and desolate ; 
 
 Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 
 
 On the shifting 
 Currents of the restless heart ; 
 Till at length in books recorded, 
 
 They, like hoarded 
 1 lousehold words, no more depart. 
 
 THE DAY IS DONE. 
 
 THE day is done, and the darkness 
 Falls from the wings of Night, 
 
 As a feather is wafted downward 
 From an eagle in his flight. 
 
 I see the lights of the village 
 
 Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
 And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 
 
 That my soul cannot resist :
 
 A fooling of sadness and longing, 
 
 That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only 
 
 As the mist resembles the rain. 
 
 Come, read to me some poem, 
 
 Some simple and heartfelt lay, 
 
 That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
 And banish the thoughts of day. 
 
 Not from the grand old masters. 
 Not from the bards sublime, 
 
 Whose distant footsteps echo 
 
 Through the corridors of Time. 
 
 For, like strains of martial music, 
 Their mighty thoughts suggest 
 
 Life's endless toil and endeavour ; 
 And to-night I long for rest. 
 
 Head from some humbler poet, 
 
 Whose songs gushed from his heart, 
 
 As showers from the clouds of summer. 
 Or tears from the eyelids start : 
 
 Who, through long days of labour. 
 
 And nights devoid of ease, 
 Still heard in his soul the music- 
 
 Of wonderful melodies.
 
 AFTERNOON IX FEBKUAKY. 121 
 
 Such songs have power to quiet 
 
 The restless pulse of care, 
 And come like the benediction 
 
 That follows after prayer. 
 
 Then read from the treasured volume 
 
 The poem of thy choice, 
 And lend to the rhyme of the poet 
 
 The beauty of thy voice. 
 
 And the night shall be filled with music, 
 And the cares, that infest the day, 
 
 Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
 And as silently steal away. 
 
 AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY. 
 
 THE day is ending, 
 The night is descending ; 
 The marsh is frozen, 
 The river dead. 
 
 Through clouds like ashes, 
 The red sun flashes 
 On village windows 
 That glimmer red.
 
 The snow recommences ; 
 The buried fences 
 Mark no longer 
 
 The road o'er the plain ; 
 
 "NVhile through the meadows, 
 Like fearful shadows, 
 Slowly passes 
 
 A funeral train. 
 
 The bell is pealing, 
 And every feeling 
 Within me responds 
 
 To the dismal knell ; 
 
 Shadows are trailing, 
 My heart is bewailing, 
 And tolling within 
 
 Like a funeral bell. 
 
 TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK. 
 
 WELCOME, my old friend, 
 Welcome to a foreign fireside, 
 While the sullen gales of autumn 
 Shake the windows.
 
 TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK. 123 
 
 The ungrateful world 
 Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, 
 Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, 
 First I met thce. 
 
 There are marks of age, 
 There are thumb-marks on thy margin, 
 Made by hands that clasped thee rudely, 
 At the ale-house. 
 
 Soiled and dull thou art ; 
 Yellow are thy time-worn pages, 
 As the russet, rain-molested 
 Leaves of autumn. 
 
 Thou art stained with wine 
 Scattered from hilarious goblets, 
 As these leaves with the libations 
 Of Olympus. 
 
 Yet dost thou recall 
 Days departed, half-forgotten, 
 AVhen in dreamy youth I wandered 
 By the Baltic, 
 
 When I paused to hear 
 The old ballad of King Christian 
 Shouted from suburban taverns 
 In the twilight.
 
 Thou recalled bards, 
 
 Who, in solitary chambers, 
 
 And with hearts by passion wasted, 
 
 Wrote thy pages. 
 
 Thou recallest homes 
 Where thy songs of love and friendship 
 Made the gloomy Northern winter 
 Bright as summer. 
 
 Once some ancient Scald, 
 In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, 
 Chanted staves of these old ballads 
 To the Vikings. 
 
 Once in Elsinorc, 
 At the court of old King Hamlet, 
 Yorick and his boon companions 
 Sang these ditties. 
 
 Once Prince Frederick's Guard 
 Sang them in their smoky barracks; 
 Suddenly the English cannon 
 Joined the choms ! 
 
 Peasants in the field, 
 Sailors on the roaring ocean, 
 Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, 
 All have sung them.
 
 TO AX OLD DAXISII SOXG-BOOK. 
 
 1 
 
 Thou hast been their friend ; 
 They, alas ! have left thee friendless ! 
 Yet at least by one warm fireside 
 Art thou welcome. 
 
 And, as swallows build 
 In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, 
 So thy twittering songs shall nestle 
 In my bosom, 
 
 Quiet close and warm, 
 Sheltered from ail molestation, 
 And recalling by their voices 
 Youth and travel.
 
 -/-.,*< ' -->:->- pBjg-< - 
 
 WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. 
 
 YOGELWEIDE the Minnesinger, 
 
 When he left this world of ours, 
 
 Laid his body in the cloister, 
 
 Under "NViirtz burg's minster towers. 
 
 And he gave the monks his treasures, 
 Gave them all with this behest : 
 
 They should feed the birds at noontide 
 Daily on his place of rest ;
 
 WAI.TER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. l-'~i 
 
 Saying-, " From those wandering; minstrels 
 I have learned the art of song ; 
 
 Let me now repay the lessons 
 
 They have taught so well and long." 
 
 Thus the bard of love departed; 
 
 And, fulfilling his desire, 
 On his tomb the birds were feasted 
 
 Bv the children of the choir. 
 
 Day by day, o'er tower and turret, 
 In foul weather and in fair, 
 
 1 )ay by day, in vaster numbers, 
 Flocked the poets of the air. 
 
 On the tree whose heavy branches 
 Overshadowed all the place, 
 
 On the pavement, on the tombstone, 
 On the poet's sculptured face, 
 
 On the cross-bars of each window, 
 On the lintel of each door, 
 
 They renewed the War of Wartburg, 
 Which the bard had fought before. 
 
 There they sang their merry carols, 
 Sang their lauds on every side ; 
 
 And the name their voices uttered 
 AVas the name of Vogelweide.
 
 Till at length the portly abbot 
 
 Murmured, " Why this waste of food ? 
 Be it changed to loaves henceforward 
 
 For our fasting brotherhood." 
 
 Then in vain o'er tower and turret, 
 
 From the walls and woodland nests, 
 
 AVhen the minster bells rang noontide-, 
 Gathered the unwelcome guests. 
 
 Then in vain, with cries discordant, 
 Clamorous round the Gothic spire, 
 
 Screamed the feathered Minnesingers 
 For the children of the choir. 
 
 Time has long effaced the inscriptions 
 On the cloister's funeral stones, 
 
 And tradition only tells us 
 
 Where repose the poet's bones. 
 
 But around the vast cathedral, 
 By sweet echoes multiplied, 
 
 Still the birds repeat the legend, 
 And the name of Vogelweide.
 
 DRINKING SONG. 
 
 INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUK PITCHKR. 
 
 COME, old friend ! sit down and listen ! 
 
 From the pitcher, placed between us, 
 How the waters laugh and glisten 
 
 In the head of old Silenus ! 
 
 Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, 
 Led by his inebriate Satyrs ; 
 
 On his breast his head is sunken, 
 Vacantly he leers and chatters. 
 
 Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow ; 
 
 Ivy crowns that brow supernal, 
 As the forehead of Apollo, 
 
 And possessing youth eternal.
 
 Hound about him, fair Bacchantes, 
 
 Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, 
 
 Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's 
 Vineyards, sing delirious verses. 
 
 Thus he won, through all the nations, 
 Bloodless victories, and the farmer 
 
 Bore, as trophies and oblations, 
 
 Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. 
 
 Judged by no o'erzealous rigour, 
 
 Much this mystic throng expresses : 
 
 Bacchus was the type of vigour, 
 And Silenus of excesses. 
 
 These are ancient ethnic revels, 
 
 Of a faith long since forsaken ; 
 
 Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, 
 Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken. 
 
 Now to rivulets ficm the mountains 
 Point the rods of fortune-tellers ; 
 
 Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, 
 Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars. 
 
 Claudius, though he sang of flagons 
 
 And huge tankards filled with Rhenish, 
 
 From that fiery blood of dragons 
 Never would his own replenish.
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 Even Kedi, though he chauntcd 
 Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys, 
 
 Never drank the wine he vaunted 
 In his dithyrambic sallies. 
 
 Then with water fill the pitcher 
 
 Wreathed about with classic fables ; 
 
 Ne'er Falernian threw a richer 
 Light upon Lucullus' tables. 
 
 Come, old friend, sit down and listen ! 
 
 As it passes thus between us, 
 How its wavelets laugh and glisten 
 
 In the head of old Silenus ! 
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 1/etmritu est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots 
 euleinent, dans le silence des tombeaux : ' Toujours ! jamais ! Janiais ! toujours ! " 
 
 JACQUES BKIDAINE. 
 
 SOMEWHAT back from the village street 
 
 Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 
 
 Across its antique portico 
 
 Tall poplar trees their shadows throw ; 
 
 And from its station in the hall 
 
 An ancient timepiece says to all, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever !"
 
 Halfway up the start's it stands, 
 
 And points and beckons with its hands 
 
 From its case of massive oak, 
 
 Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
 
 Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
 
 With sorrowful voice to all who pass, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 By day its voice is low and light ; 
 
 But in the silent dead of night, 
 
 Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 
 
 It echoes along the vacant hall, 
 
 Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
 
 And seems to say, at each chamber door, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever! " 
 
 Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
 Through days of death and days of birth, 
 Through every swift vicissitude 
 Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
 And as if, like God, it aU things saw, 
 It calmly repeats those words of awe, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 In that mansion used to be 
 Free-hearted Hospitality ;
 
 THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. 
 
 His great fires up the chimney roared ; 
 The stranger feasted at his board ; 
 But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
 That warning timepiece never ceased, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 There groups of merry children played, 
 There youths and maidens dreaming strayed :
 
 O precious hours! O golden prime, 
 And affluence of love and time ! 
 Even as a miser counts his gold, 
 Those hours the ancient timepiece told, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 From that chamber, clothed in white, 
 The bride came forth on her wedding night 
 There, in that silent room below, 
 The dead lay in his shroud of snow ; 
 And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
 Was heard the old clock on the stair, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever ! " 
 
 All are scattered now and fled, 
 Some are married, some are dead ; 
 And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
 "Ah! when shall they all meet again : J ' 
 As in the days long since gone by, 
 The ancient timepiece makes reply, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever! '' 
 
 Never here, forever there, 
 Where all parting, pain, and care, 
 And death, and time shall disappear, 
 Forever there, but never here !
 
 THE ARROW AND THE SONG. 
 
 The horologe of Eternity 
 Sayeth this incessantly, 
 
 " Forever never ! 
 
 Never forever! " 
 
 THE ARROW AND THE SONG. 
 
 I SHOT an arrow into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
 Could not follow it in its flight. 
 
 I breathed a song into the air, 
 It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 
 For who has sight so keen and strong, 
 That it can follow the flight of song? 
 
 Long, long afterward, in an oak 
 I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
 And the song, from beginning to end, 
 I found again in the heart of a friend.
 
 "'* 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 THOU comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, 
 With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, 
 Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, 
 And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain !
 
 THE EVENING STAR. 137 
 
 Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne, 
 Upon thy bridge of gold ; thy royal hand 
 Outstretched with benedictions o'er the land, 
 Blessing the farms through all thy vast domain ! 
 Thy shield is the red harvest nioon, suspended 
 So long beneath the heaven's o'erhanging eaves, 
 Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended ; 
 Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves ; 
 And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid, 
 Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves ! 
 
 THE EVENING STAR. 
 
 Lo ! in the painted oriel of the West, 
 
 Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines, 
 
 Like a fab.' lady at her casement, shines 
 
 The evening star, the star of love and rest ! 
 
 And then anon she doth herself divest 
 
 Of all her radiant garments, and reclines 
 
 Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines, 
 
 With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed. 
 
 O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus ! 
 
 My morning and my evening star of love ! 
 
 My best and gentlest lady ! even thus, 
 
 As that fair planet in the sky above, 
 
 Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night, 
 
 And from thy darkened window fades the light.
 
 DANTE. 
 
 TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, 
 
 With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes, 
 
 Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise, 
 
 Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. 
 
 Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom ; 
 
 Yet in thy heart what human sympathies, 
 
 What soft compassion glows, as in the skies 
 
 The tender stars their clouded lamps relume ! 
 
 Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks, 
 
 By Fra Hilario in his diocese, 
 
 As up the convent walls, in golden streaks, 
 
 The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease ; 
 
 And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks, 
 
 Thy voice along the cloister whispers, " Peace !" 
 
 \
 
 EARLIER POEMS.
 
 These poems were written, for the most part, during my college life, 
 and all of them before the age of nineteen. Some have found their way 
 into schools, and seem to be successful. Others lead a vagabond and pre- 
 carious existence in the corners of newspapers ; or have changed their names, 
 and run away to seek their fortunes beyond the sea. I say, with the Bishop 
 of Avranches, on a similar occasion : " I cannot be displeased to see these 
 children of mine, which I have neglected, and almost exposed, brought from 
 their wanderings in lanes and alleys, and safely lodged, in order to go forth 
 into the world together in a more decorous garb."
 
 AX APRIL DAY. 
 
 WHEN the warm sun, that brings 
 Seed-time and harvest, has returned again, 
 'T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs 
 
 The first flower of the plain.
 
 14:2 KARLIER POEMS. 
 
 I love the season well, 
 
 When forest glades are teeming with bright forms. 
 Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell 
 
 The coming-on of storms. 
 
 From the earth's loosened mould 
 The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives ; 
 Though stricken to the heart with winter's cold, 
 
 The drooping tree revives. 
 
 The softly warbled song 
 
 Coines from the pleasant woods, and coloured wings 
 Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along 
 
 The forest openings. 
 
 When the bright sunset fills 
 
 The silver woods with light, the green slope throws 
 Its shadows in the hollows of the hills, 
 
 And wide the upland glows. 
 
 And, when the eve is born, 
 In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far, 
 Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn 
 
 And twinkles many a star. 
 
 Inverted in the tide, 
 
 Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw, 
 And the fair trees look over, side by side, 
 
 And see themselves below.
 
 Sweet April ! many a thought 
 Is wedded uuto thce, as hearts arc wed ; 
 Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought, 
 
 Life's golden fruit is shed. 
 
 , ._ AUTUMN. 
 
 WITH what a glory comes aud goes the year ! 
 The buds of spring, those beautiful harbingers 
 Of sunny skies and cloudless times, enjoy 
 Life's newness, and earth's garniture spread out ;
 
 141 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 And when the silver habit of the clouds 
 Comes down upon the autumn sun, and with 
 A sober gladness the old year takes up 
 His bright inheritance of golden fruits, 
 A pomp and pageant fill the splendid scene. 
 
 There is a beautiful spirit breathing now 
 Its mellow richness on the clustered trees, 
 And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, 
 Pouiiug new glory on the autumn woods, 
 And dipping in warm light the pillared clouds. 
 Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, 
 Lifts up her purple wing, and in the vales 
 The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, 
 Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life 
 Within, the solemn woods of ash deep-crimsoned, 
 And silver beech, and maple yellow-leaved, 
 Where autumn, like a faint old man, sits down 
 By the wayside a-weary. Through the trees 
 The golden robin moves. The purple finch, 
 That on wild cherry and red cedar feeds, 
 A winter bird, conies with its plaintive whistle. 
 And pecks by the witch-hazel, whilst aloud 
 From cottage roofs the warbling blue-bird sings. 
 And merrily, with oft-repeated stroke, 
 Sounds from the threshing-floor the busy flail. 
 
 O what a glory doth this world put on 
 For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth 
 Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks 
 On duties well performed, and days well spent !
 
 WOODS IN WINTER. 145 
 
 For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves 
 Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings. 
 He shall so hear the solemn hymn, that Death 
 Has lifted up for all, that he shall go 
 To his long resting-place without a tear. 
 
 WOODS IN WINTER. 
 
 WHEN winter winds are piercing chill, 
 
 And through the hawthorn blows the gale, 
 
 With solemn feet I tread the hill, 
 That overbrows the lonely vale. 
 
 O'er the bare upland, and away 
 
 Through the long reach of desert woods, 
 The embracing sunbeams chastely play, 
 
 And gladden these deep solitudes. 
 
 Where, twisted round the barren oak, 
 The summer vine in beauty clung, 
 
 And summer winds the stillness broke, 
 The crystal icicle is hung. 
 
 Where, from their frozen urns mute springs 
 Pour out the river's gradual tide, 
 
 Shrilly the skater's iron rings, 
 
 And voices fill the woodland side. 
 
 T
 
 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 Alas ! how changed from the fair scene, 
 When birds sang out their mellow lay, 
 
 And winds were soft, and woods were green, 
 And the song ceased not with the day. 
 
 But still wild music is abroad, 
 
 Pale, desert Avoods ! within your crowd ; 
 And gathering winds, in hoarse accord, 
 
 Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
 
 HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM. 147 
 
 Chill airs and wintry winds ! my car 
 
 Has grown familiar with your song ; 
 
 I hear it in the opening year, 
 I listen, and it cheers me long. 
 
 HYMN OF THE MORAVIAN NUNS OF BETHLEHEM, 
 
 WHEN the dying flame of day 
 Through the chancel shot its ray, 
 Far the glimmering tapers shed 
 Faint light on the cowled head ; 
 And the censer burning swung, 
 Where, before the altar, hung 
 The blood-red banner, that with prayer 
 Had been consecrated there. 
 And the nun's sweet hymn was heard the while, 
 Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle. 
 
 " Take thy banner ! May it wave 
 Proudly o'er the good and brave ; 
 When the battle's distant wail 
 Breaks the sabbath of our vale, 
 When the clarion's music thrills 
 To the hearts of these lone hills, 
 When the spear in conflict shakes, 
 And the strong lance shivering breaks.
 
 148 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 " Take thy banner ! and, beneath 
 The battle-cloud's encircling wreath, 
 Guard it ! till our homes are free ! 
 Guard it ! God will prosper thee ! 
 In the dark and trying hour, 
 In the breaking forth of power, 
 In the rush of steeds and men, 
 His right hand will shield thee then. 
 
 " Take thy banner ! But, when night 
 
 Closes round the ghastly fight, 
 
 If the vanquished warrior bow, 
 
 Spare him ! By our holy vow, 
 
 By our prayers and many tears, 
 
 By the mercy that endears, 
 
 Spare him ! he our love hath shared ! 
 
 Spare him ! as thou wouldst be spared ! 
 
 " Take thy banner ! and if e'er 
 Thou shouldst press the soldier's bier, 
 And the muffled drum should beat 
 To the tread of mournful feet, 
 Then this crimson flag shall be 
 Martial cloak and shroud for thee." 
 
 The warrior took that banner proud, 
 And it was his martial cloak and shroud
 
 SUNKISE OX THE HILLS. 
 
 I STOOD upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch 
 
 Was glorious with the sun's returning march, 
 
 And woods were hrightened, and soft gales 
 
 Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales. 
 
 The clouds were far heneath me ; bathed in light, 
 
 They gathered midway round the wooded height, 
 
 And, in their fading glory, shone 
 
 Like hosts in battle overthrown, 
 
 As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance, 
 
 Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance-. 
 
 And rocking on the cliff was left 
 
 The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft. 
 
 The veil of cloud was lifted, and below 
 
 Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow 
 
 Was darkened by the forest's shade, 
 
 Or glistened in the white cascade ; 
 
 Where upward, in the mellow blush of day, 
 
 The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way. 
 
 I heard the distant waters dash, 
 I saw the current whirl and flash, 
 And richly, by the blue lake's silver beach, 
 The woods were bending with a silent reach. 
 Then o'er the vale, with gentle swell, 
 The music of the village bell 
 Came sweetly to the echo-giving hills ; 
 And the wild horn, whose voice the woodland fills,
 
 150 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 Was ringing to the merry shout, 
 
 That faint and far the glen sent out, 
 
 Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke, 
 
 Through thick-leaved branches, from the dingle broke 
 
 If thou art worn and hard beset 
 With sorrows, that thou wouldst forget, 
 If thou wouldst read a lesson, that will keep 
 Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep 
 Go to the woods and hills ! No tears 
 ] )im the sweet look that Nature wears.
 
 THE SPIRIT OF POETRY. 
 
 THERE is a quiet spirit in these woods, 
 That dwells where'er the gentle south wind blows 
 Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, 
 The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, 
 The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. 
 "\Vith what a tender and impassioned voice 
 It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, 
 "When the fast-ushering star of morning comes 
 O'ei'-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; 
 Or Avhen the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, 
 In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, 
 Departs with silent pace ! That spirit moves 
 In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
 From its full laver, pours the white cascade ; 
 And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, 

 
 152 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter. 
 
 And frequent, on the everlasting hills, 
 
 Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself 
 
 In all the dark emhroidery of the storm, 
 
 And shouts the stern, strong wind. And here, amid 
 
 The silent majesty of these deep woods, 
 
 Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from earth, 
 
 As to the sunshine and the pure, bright air 
 
 Their tops the green trees lift. Hence gifted bards 
 
 Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. 
 
 For them there was an eloquent voice in all 
 
 The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden sun, 
 
 The flowers, the leaves, the river on its way, 
 
 Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle winds, 
 
 The swelling upland, where the sidelong sun 
 
 Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, 
 
 Groves, through whose broken roof the sky looks in, 
 
 Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny vale, 
 
 The distant lake, fountains, and mighty trees, 
 
 In many a lazy syllable, repeating 
 
 Their old poetic legends to the wind. 
 
 And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill 
 The world ; and, in these wayward days of youth, 
 My busy fancy oft embodies it, 
 As a bright image of the light and beauty 
 That dwell in nature, of the heavenly forms 
 AVe worship in our dreams, and the soft hues 
 That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds 
 When the sun sets. Within her eye
 
 BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. 153 
 
 The heaven of April, with its changing light, 
 
 And when it wears the blue of May, is hung, 
 
 And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her hair 
 
 Is like the summer tresses of the trees, 
 
 When twilight makes them brown, and on her cheek 
 
 Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, 
 
 With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, 
 
 It is so like the gentle air of Spring, 
 
 As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes 
 
 Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy 
 
 To have it round us, and her silver voice 
 
 Is the rich music of a summer bird, 
 
 Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence. 
 
 BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. 
 
 ON sunny slope and beachen swell, 
 The shadowed light of evening fell ; 
 And, where the maple's leaf was brown, 
 With soft and silent lapse came down 
 The glory, that the wood receives, 
 At sunset, in its brazen leaves. 
 
 Far upward in the mellow light 
 
 Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, 
 
 Around a far uplifted cone, 
 
 In the warm blush of evening shone ;
 
 KARUKR 1'OKMS. 
 
 Aii image of the silver lakes, 
 
 By which the Indian's soul awakes. 
 
 But soon a funeral hymn was heard 
 Where the soft breatli of evening stirred 
 The tall, gray forest ; and a band 
 Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
 
 Bl'KIAL OF THK MINXISIXK. 155 
 
 C'omc winding down beside the wave, 
 To lay the red ehief in his grave. 
 
 They sang, that by his native bowers 
 He stood, in the last moon of flowers, 
 And thirty snows had not yet shed 
 Their glory on the warrior's head ; 
 But, as the summer fruit decays, 
 So died he in those naked days. 
 
 A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin 
 Covered the warrior, and within 
 Its heavy folds the weapons, made 
 For the hard toils of war, were laid ; 
 The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, 
 And the broad belt of shells and beads. 
 
 Before, a dark-haired virgin train 
 Chanted the death dirge of the slain ; 
 Behind, the long procession came 
 Of hoary men and chiefs of fame, 
 AVith heavy hearts, and eyes of grief, 
 Leading the war-horse of their chief. 
 
 Stripped of his proud and martial dress, 
 Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, 
 With darting eye and nostril spread, 
 And heavy and impatient tread,
 
 EARLIER POEMS. 
 
 He came ; and oft that eye so proud 
 Asked for his rider in the crowd. 
 
 They buried the dark chief; they freed 
 Beside the grave his battle steed ; 
 And swift an arrow cleaved its way 
 To his stern heart ! One piercing neigh 
 Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, 
 The rider grasps his steed again.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
 
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. 
 
 UNDER a spreading chestnut tree 
 The village smithy stands ; 
 
 The smith, a mighty man is he, 
 
 AVith large and sinewy hands ; 
 
 And the muscles of his brawny arms 
 Are strong as iron bands.
 
 ]60 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 His hail 1 is crisp, and black, and long, 
 
 His face is like the tan ; 
 His brow is wet with honest sweat, 
 
 He earns whate'er he can, 
 And looks the whole world in the face, 
 
 For he owes not any man. 
 
 Week in, week out, from morn till night, 
 You can hear his bellows blow ; 
 
 You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 
 With measured beat and slow, 
 
 Like a sexton ringing the village bell, 
 When the evening sun is low. 
 
 And children coming home from school 
 
 Look in at the open door ; 
 They love to see the flaming forge, 
 
 And hear the bellows roar, 
 And catch the burning sparks that fly 
 
 Like chaff from a threshing floor. 
 
 He goes on Sunday to the church, 
 
 And sits among his boys ; 
 He hears the parson pray and preach, 
 
 He hears his daughter's voice 
 Singing in the village choir, 
 
 And it makes his heart rejoice. 
 
 It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 
 Singing in Paradise !
 
 THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH. 
 
 He needs must think of her once more, 
 
 How in the grave she lies ; 
 And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
 
 A tear out of his eyes. 
 
 Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, 
 Onward through life he goes ; 
 
 Each morning sees some task begin, 
 Each evening sees it close ; 
 
 Something attempted, something done, 
 Has earned a night's repose. 
 
 Thanks, thanks to thec, my worthy friend, 
 For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
 
 Thus at the flaming forge of life 
 
 Our fortunes must he wrought ; 
 
 Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
 Each burning deed and thought !
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POKMs. 
 
 EIsDYMION. 
 
 TllE rising moon has hid the stars ; 
 
 Her level rays, like golden bars, 
 
 Lie on the landscape green, 
 With shadows brown between.
 
 And silver white the river gleams, 
 As if Diana in her dreams, 
 
 Had dropt her silver bow 
 
 Upon the meadows low. 
 
 On such a tranquil night as this, 
 She woke Endymion with a kiss, 
 
 When, sleeping in the grove 
 He dreamed not of her love. 
 
 Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, 
 Love gives itself, but is not bought ; 
 Nor voice, nor sound betrays 
 Its deep, impassioned gaze. 
 
 It comes, the beautiful, the free, 
 
 The crown of all humanity, 
 In silence and alone 
 To seek the elected one. 
 
 It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep, 
 Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, 
 And kisses the closed eyes 
 Of him, who slumbering lies. 
 
 O, weary hearts ! O, slumbering eyes ! 
 
 O, drooping souls, whose.destinies 
 
 Are fraught with fear and pain, 
 Ye shall be loved again !
 
 14 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 No one is so accursed by fate, 
 No one so utterly desolate, 
 
 But some heart, though unknown, 
 
 Responds unto his own . 
 
 Responds, as if with unseen wings, 
 An angel touched its quivering strings ; 
 And whispers, in its song, 
 " Where hast thou stayed so long?' 

 
 THE TWO LOCKS OF HAIR. 
 
 A YOUTH, light-hearted and content, 
 I wander through the world ; 
 
 Here, Arab-like, is pitched my tent 
 And straight again is furled. 
 
 Yet oft I dream, that once a wife 
 Close in my heart was locked, 
 
 And in the sweet repose of life 
 A blessed child I rocked. 
 
 I wake ! Away that dream, away ! 
 
 Too long did it remain ! 
 So long, that both by night and day 
 
 It ever comes again. 
 
 The end lies ever in my thought ; 
 
 To a grave so cold and deep 
 The mother beautiful was brought ; 
 
 Then dropt the child asleep. 
 
 But now the dream is wholly o'er, 
 
 I bathe mine eyes and see ; 
 And wander through the world once more, 
 
 A youth so light and free.
 
 W, MISCELLANKOUS 1'OKAIS. 
 
 Two locks, and they arc wondrous fail- 
 Left me that vision mild ; 
 
 The brown is from the mother's hair, 
 The blond is from the child. 
 
 And when I see that lock of gold, 
 Pale grows the evening-red ; 
 
 And when the dark lock I behold, 
 I wish that I were dead. 
 
 IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY. 
 
 THE sun is bright, the air is clear, 
 
 The darting swallows soar and sing, 
 
 And from the stately elms I hear 
 
 The blue-bird prophesying Spring. 
 
 So blue yon winding river flows, 
 It seems an outlet from the sky, 
 
 Where waiting till the west wind blows, 
 The freighted clouds at anchor lie. 
 
 All things are new ; the buds, the leaves, 
 That guild the elm tree's nodding crest, 
 
 And even the nest beneath the eaves ; 
 There arc no birds in last vear's nest !
 
 IT IS NOT ALWAYS MAY. 
 
 All tilings rejoice in youth and love, 
 The fulness of their first delight ! 
 
 And learn from the soft heavens above 
 The melting 1 tenderness of night. 
 
 Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme, 
 Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay ; 
 
 Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime, 
 For O ! it is not always May !
 
 108 MISCELLANEOUS I'OE.MS. 
 
 Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, 
 To some good angel leave the rest; 
 
 For Time will teach thee soon the truth, 
 There are no birds in last year's nest ! 
 
 THE RAINY DAY. 
 
 THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary ; 
 It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
 The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 
 But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 
 And the day is- dark and dreary. 
 
 My life is cold, and dark, and dreary ; 
 It rains, and the wind is never weary ; 
 My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, 
 But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast 
 And the days are dark and dreary. 
 
 Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining ; 
 Behind the clouds is the sun still shining ; 
 Thy. fate is the common fate of all, 
 Into each life some rain must fall, 
 
 Some days must be dark and dreary.
 
 GOD'S-ACRE. 
 
 I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls 
 The burial-ground God's-Acre ! It is just ; 
 
 It consecrates each grave within its walls, 
 
 And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust. 
 
 God's-Acre ! Yes, that blessed name imparts 
 
 Comfort to those, who in the grave have sown 
 
 The seed, that they had garnered in their hearts, 
 Their bread of life, alas ! no more their own.
 
 170 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Into its furrows shall we all be cast, 
 
 In the sure faith, that we shall rise again 
 
 At the great harvest, when the arch-angel's blast 
 Shall winnow, like a fan, the chaff and grain. 
 
 Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, 
 In the fair gardens of that second birth ; 
 
 And each bright blossom, mingle its perfume 
 
 With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth. 
 
 With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod, 
 And spread the furrow for the seed we sow ; 
 
 This is the field and Acre of our God, 
 
 This is the place, where human harvests grow ! 
 
 TO THE RIVER CHARLES. 
 
 RIVER ! that in silence windest 
 
 Through the meadow's, bright and fre< 
 Till at length thy rest thou findest 
 
 In the bosom of the sea ! 
 
 Four long years of mingled feeling, 
 Half in rest, and half in strife, 
 
 I have seen thy waters stealing 
 
 Onward, like the stream of life.
 
 TO THE RIVER CHARLES. 171 
 
 Thou hast taught me, Silent Ilivcr ! 
 
 Many a lesson, deep and long ; 
 Thou hast been a generous giver ; 
 
 I can give thee but a song. 
 
 Oft in sadness and in illness, 
 
 I have watched thy current glide, 
 
 Till the beauty of its stillness 
 Overflowed me, like a tide. 
 
 And in better hours and brighter, 
 When I saw thy waters gleam, 
 
 I have felt my heart beat lighter, 
 
 And leap onward with thy stream. 
 
 Not for this alone I love thee, 
 
 Nor because, thy waves of blue 
 
 From celestial seas above thee 
 Take their own celestial hue. 
 
 Where yon shadowy woodlands hide thee. 
 
 And thy waters disappear, 
 Friends I love have dwelt beside thee, 
 
 And have made thy margin dear. 
 
 More than this ; thy name reminds me 
 Of three friends, all true and tried ; 
 
 And that name, like magic, binds me 
 Closer, closer to thy side.
 
 172 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Friends my soul with joy remembers ! 
 
 How like quivering flames they start, 
 When I fan the living embers 
 
 On the hearth-stone of my heart ! 
 
 "I is for this, thou Silent River ! 
 
 That my spirit leans to thee : 
 Thou hast been a generous giver, 
 
 Take this idle song from me. 
 
 BLIND BARTIMEUS. 
 
 BLIND Bartimeus at the gates 
 
 Of Jericho in darkness waits ; 
 
 He hears the crowd ; he hears a breath 
 
 Say, " It is Christ of Nazareth ! " 
 
 And calls, in tones of agony, 
 
 The thronging multitudes increase ; 
 Blind Bartimeus, hold thy peace ! 
 But still, above the noisy crowd, 
 The beggar's cry is shrill and loud ; 
 Until they say, " He calleth thee ! " 
 Qapaei, tyeipat 
 
 Then saith the Christ, as silent stands 
 The crowd, " What wilt thou at my hands '.
 
 THE GOBLET OF LIFE. 1 
 
 And he replies, " O give me light ! 
 Rabbi, restore the blind man's sight ! 
 And Jesus answers, 
 ' II TriffTig <rov 
 
 Ye that have eyes, yet cannot see, 
 In darkness and in misery, 
 Recall those mighty Voices Three, 
 'Lrjffov, tXirjaov fie ! 
 Qapcret, 'iyetpai, viraye. ! 
 'II irtffTiQ ffov uiawKi at ! 
 
 THE GOBLET OF LIFE. 
 
 FILLED is Life's goblet to the brim ; 
 And though my eyes with tears are dim, 
 I see its sparkling bubbles swim, 
 And chaunt a melancholy hymn 
 With solemn voice and slow. 
 
 No purple flowers, no garlands green, 
 Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen, 
 Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene, 
 Like gleams of sunshine, flash between 
 Thick leaves of mistletoe. 
 
 This goblet, wrought with curious art, 
 Is filled with waters, that upstart,
 
 174 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 When the deep fountains of the heart, 
 By strong convulsions rent apart, 
 Are running all to waste. 
 
 And as it mantling passes round, 
 With fennel is it wreathed and crowned, 
 Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowncd 
 Are in its waters steeped and drowned, 
 And give a bitter taste. 
 
 Above the lowly plants it towers, 
 The fennel, with its yellow flowers, 
 And in an earlier age than ours 
 Was gifted with the wondrous powers, 
 Lost vision to restore. 
 
 It gave new strength, and fearless mood ; 
 And gladiators, fierce and rude, 
 Mingled it in their daily food ; 
 And he who battled and subdued, 
 A wreath of fennel wore. 
 
 Then in Life's goblet freely press 
 The leaves that give it bitterness, 
 Nor prize the coloured waters less, 
 For in thy darkness and distress 
 
 New light and strength they give ! 
 
 And he who has not learned to know 
 How false its sparkling bubbles show,
 
 THP: GOBLET OF LIFE. 175 
 
 How bitter are the drops of woe, 
 AVith which its brim may overflow, 
 He has not learned to live. 
 
 The prayer of Ajax was for light ; 
 Through all that dark and desperate fight, 
 The blackness of that noonday night, 
 He asked but the return of sight, 
 To see his foeman's face. 
 
 Let our unceasing, earnest prayer 
 Be, too, for light, for strength to bear 
 Our portion of the weight of care, 
 That crushes into dumb despair 
 One half the human race. 
 
 suffering, sad humanity ! 
 () ye afflicted ones, who lie 
 Steeped to the lips in misery, 
 Longing, and yet afraid to die, 
 
 Patient, though sorely tried ! 
 
 1 pledge you in this cup of grief, 
 AA r herc floats the fennel's bitter leaf! 
 The Battle of our Life is brief, 
 
 The alarm, the struggle, the relief- 
 Then sleep we side by side.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 MAIDEN ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
 In whose orbs a shadow lies 
 Like the dusk in evening skies !
 
 MAIDENHOOD. 177 
 
 Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
 Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
 As the braided streamlets run ! 
 
 Standing, with reluctant feet, 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet ! 
 
 Gazing, with a timid glance, 
 On the brooklet's swift advance, 
 On the river's broad expanse ! 
 
 Deep and still, that gliding stream 
 Beautiful to thee must seem, 
 As the river of a dream. 
 
 Then why pause with indecision, 
 AVhen bright angels in thy vision 
 Beckon thee to fields Elysian ? 
 
 Seest thou shadows sailing by, 
 As the dove, with startled eye, 
 Sees the falcon's shadow fly ? 
 
 Hearest thou voices on the shore, 
 That our ears perceive no more, 
 Deafened by the cataract's roar ? 
 
 O, thou child of many prayers ! 
 
 Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares ! 
 
 Care and age come unawares !
 
 178 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Like the swell of some sweet tune, 
 Morning rises into noon, 
 May glides onward into June. 
 
 Childhood is the bough, where slumbered 
 Birds and blossoms many-numbered ; 
 Age, that bough with snows encumbered. 
 
 Gather, then, each flower that grows, 
 When the young heart overflows, 
 To embalm that tent of snows. 
 
 Bear a lily in thy hand ; 
 
 Gates of brass cannot withstand 
 
 One touch of that magic wand. 
 
 Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, 
 In thy heart the dew of youth, 
 On thy lips the smile of truth. 
 
 O, that dew, like balm, shall steal 
 Into wounds, that cannot heal, 
 Even as sleep our eyes doth seal ; 
 
 And that smile, like sunshine, dart 
 Into many a sunless heart, 
 For a smile of God thou art.
 
 EXCELSIOR. 
 
 THE shades of night were falling fast, 
 As through an Alpine village passed 
 A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 
 A banner with the strange device 
 Excelsior !
 
 180 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 His brow was sad ; his eye beneath, 
 Flashed like a faulchion from its sheath, 
 And like a silver clarion rung 
 The accents of that unknown tongue, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 In happy homes he saw the light 
 Of household fires gleam warm and bright ; 
 Above, the spectral glaciers shone, 
 And from his lips escaped a groan, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 " Try not the Pass!" the old man said; 
 "Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 
 The roaring torrent is deep and wide ! "' 
 And loud that clarion voice replied 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 " O stay," the maiden said, " and rest 
 Thy weary head upon this breast ! " 
 A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 
 But still he answered, with a sigh, 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 " Beware the pine-tree's withered branch ! 
 Beware the awful avalanche ! " 
 This was the peasant's last Good-night, 
 A voice replied, far up the height, 
 Excelsior !
 
 At break of day, as heavenward 
 The pious monks of Saint Bernard 
 Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 
 A voice cried through the startled air 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 A traveller, by the faithful hound, 
 Half-buried in the snow was found, 
 Still grasping in his hand of ice 
 That banner with the strange device 
 Excelsior ! 
 
 There in the twilight cold and gray, 
 Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 
 And from the sky, serene and far, 
 A voice fell, like a falling star, 
 Excelsior! 
 
 CARILLON. 
 
 IN the ancient town of Bruges, 
 In the quaint old Flemish city, 
 As the evening shades descended, 
 Low and loud and sweetly blended, 
 Low at times and loud at times, 
 And changing like a poet's rhymes, 
 Rang the beautiful wild chimes 
 From the Belfry in the market 
 Of the ancient town of Bruges.
 
 182 MISCELLANEOUS I'OEMS. 
 
 Then with deep sonorous clangour 
 Calmly answering their sweet anger, 
 When the wrangling bells had ended, 
 Slowly struck the clock eleven, 
 And, from out the silent heaven, 
 Silence on the town descended. 
 Silence, silence everywhere 
 On the earth and in the air, 
 Save that footsteps here and there 
 Of some burgher home returning, 
 By the street lamps faintly burning, 
 For a moment woke the echoes 
 Of the ancient town of Bruges. 
 
 But amid my broken slumbers 
 Still I heard those magic numbers, 
 As they loud proclaimed the flight 
 And stolen marches of the night ; 
 Till their chimes in sweet collision 
 Mingled with each wandering vision, 
 Mingled with the fortune-telling 
 Gipsy bands of dreams and fancies, 
 Which amid the waste expanses 
 Of the silent land of trances 
 Have their solitary dwelling. 
 All else seemed asleep in Bruges, 
 In the quaint old Flemish city. 
 
 And I thought how like these chimes 
 Are the poet's airy rhymes, 
 All his rhymes and roundelays, 
 His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
 
 From the belfry of his brain, 
 Scattered downward, though in vain, 
 On the roofs and stones of cities ! 
 For by night the drowsy ear 
 Under its curtains cannot hear, 
 And by day men go their ways, 
 Hearing the music as they pass, 
 But deeming it no more, alas ! 
 Than the hollow sound of brass. 
 
 Yet perchance a sleepless wight, 
 
 Lodging at some humble inn 
 
 In the narrow lanes of life, 
 
 When the dusk and hush of night 
 
 Shut out the incessant din 
 
 Of daylight and its toil and strife, 
 
 May listen with a calm delight 
 
 To the poet's melodies, 
 
 Till he hears, or dreams he hears, 
 
 Intel-mingled with the song, 
 
 Thoughts that he has cherished long ; 
 
 Hears amid the chime and singing 
 
 The bells of his own village ringing, 
 
 And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes 
 
 "Wet with most delicious tears. 
 
 Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay 
 In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Ble, 
 Listening with a wild delight 
 To the chimes that, through the night, 
 Kang their changes from the Belfry 
 Of that quaint old Flemish city.
 
 THE BELFRY OF BRUGES. 
 
 IN the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown 
 Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town. 
 
 As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood, 
 And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.
 
 THE BELFRY OF BRUGES. 185 
 
 Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapours 
 
 gray, 
 Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay. 
 
 At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there, 
 Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into 
 air. 
 
 Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour, 
 But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower. 
 
 From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows' wild and 
 
 high; 
 And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the 
 
 sky. 
 
 Then most musical and solemn, biinging back the olden times, 
 AVith their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes, 
 
 Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir ; 
 And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar. 
 
 Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain ; 
 They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again ; 
 
 All the Foresters of Flanders, mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, 
 Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre. 
 
 I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned those days of old ; 
 Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of 
 Gold;
 
 186 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies ; 
 Ministers from twenty nations ; more than royal pomp and ease. 
 
 I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground ; 
 I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound ; 
 
 And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen, 
 And the armtd guard around them, and the SAVord unsheathed 
 between. 
 
 I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold, 
 Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold ; 
 
 Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods moving west, 
 Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest. 
 
 And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote ; 
 And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat ; 
 
 Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, 
 " I am Roland ! I am Roland ! there is victory in the land! " 
 
 Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar 
 Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once 
 more. 
 
 Hours had passed aw r ay like minutes ; and, before I was aware, 
 I,o ! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
 
 /. r$T A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE. 
 
 THIS is the place. Stand still, my steed, 
 
 Let me review the scene, 
 And summon from the shadowy Past 
 
 The forms that once have been. 
 
 The Past and Present here unite 
 Beneath Time's flowing tide, 
 
 Like foot-prints hidden by a brook, 
 But seen on either side.
 
 188 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, 
 
 Here runs the highway to the town ; 
 
 There the green lane descends, 
 Through which I walked to church with thee, 
 
 O gentlest of my friends ! 
 
 The shadow of the linden trees 
 
 Lay moving on the grass ; 
 Between them and the moving boughs, 
 
 A shadow, thou didst pass. 
 
 Thy dress was like the lilies, 
 
 And thy heart as pure as they : 
 
 One of God's holy messengers 
 Did walk with me that day. 
 
 I saw the branches of the trees 
 
 Bend down thy touch to meet, 
 
 The clover-blossoms in the grass 
 Rise up to kiss thy feet. 
 
 " Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares, 
 
 Of earth and folly born ! '' 
 Solemnly sang the village choir 
 
 On that sweet sabbath morn. 
 
 Through the closed blinds the golden sun 
 
 Poured in a dusty beam, 
 Like the celestial ladder seen 
 
 By Jacob in his dream.
 
 A GLEAM OF SUNSHIXK. 189 
 
 And ever and anon, the wind, 
 
 Sweet-scented with the hay, 
 Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves 
 
 That on the window lay. 
 
 Long was the good man's sermon, 
 
 Yet it seemed not so to me ; 
 For he spake of Ruth the beautiful, 
 
 And still I thought of thee. 
 
 Long was the prayer he uttered, 
 
 Yet it seemed not so to me ; 
 For in my heart I prayed with him, 
 
 And still I thought of thee. 
 
 But now, alas ! the place seems changed ; 
 
 Thou art no longer here : 
 Part of the sunshine of the scene 
 
 With thee did disappear. 
 
 Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart, 
 Like pine trees dark and high, 
 
 Subdue the light of noon, and breathe , 
 A low and ceaseless sigh ; 
 
 This memory brightens o'er the past, 
 
 As when the sun, concealed 
 Behind some cloud that near us hangs, 
 
 Shines on a distant field.
 
 THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 
 
 THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 
 
 Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms ; 
 
 But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
 Startles the villages with strange alarms. 
 
 Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, 
 When the death-angel touches those swift keys ! 
 
 What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
 
 Will mingle with their awful symphonies ! 
 
 I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus. 
 The cries of agony, the endless groan, 
 
 Which, through the ages that have gone before us, 
 In long reverberations reach our own. 
 
 On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer. 
 
 Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, 
 
 And loud, amid the universal clamour, 
 
 O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong. 
 
 I hear the Florentine, who from his palace 
 
 Wheels out his battle bell with dreadful din, 
 
 And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 
 
 Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin ;
 
 THE ABSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. 191 
 
 The tumult of each sacked and burning village ; 
 
 The shout that eveiy prayer for mercy drowns ; 
 The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage ; 
 
 The wail of famine in beleaguered towns ; 
 
 The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder, 
 The rattling musketry, the clashing blade ; 
 
 And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, 
 The diapason of the cannonade. 
 
 Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 
 
 With such accursed instruments as these, 
 
 Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, 
 And jarrest the celestial harmonies ? 
 
 Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, 
 
 Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, 
 
 Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
 There were no need of arsenals nor forts 
 
 The warrior's name would be a name abhorred ! 
 
 And eveiy nation, that should lift again 
 Its hand against a brother, on its forehead 
 
 AVould wear for evermore the curse of Cain ! 
 
 Down the dark future, through long generations, 
 
 The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease ; 
 
 And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 
 
 I hear once more the voice of Christ say, " Peace ! ''
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Peace ! arid no longer from its brazen portals 
 
 The Mast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! 
 
 But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 
 The holy melodies of love arise. 
 
 NUREMBERG. 
 
 IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands 
 
 Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. 
 
 Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, 
 Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them 
 throng: 
 
 Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, 
 Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old ; 
 
 And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, 
 That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every 
 clime. 
 
 In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, 
 Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand ; 
 
 On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days 
 Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. 
 
 Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art : 
 Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common 
 mart ;
 
 193 
 
 And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, 
 By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. 
 
 In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined liis holy dust, 
 
 And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust ; 
 
 In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, 
 Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. 
 
 Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, 
 Lived and laboured Albrecht Diirer, the Evangelist of Art ; 
 
 Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, 
 Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
 
 194 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies ; 
 Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. 
 
 Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fail 1 , 
 That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air ! 
 
 Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal 
 
 lanes, 
 Walked of yore the Master-singers, chanting rude poetic strains. 
 
 From remote and sunless suburbs, came they to the friendly guild, 
 Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. 
 
 As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, 
 And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime ; 
 
 Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy 
 
 bloom 
 In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. 
 
 Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler -poet, laureate of the gentle craft, 
 Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. 
 
 But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, 
 And a garland in the window, and his face above the door ; 
 
 Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, 
 
 As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. 
 
 And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, 
 Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.
 
 NUREMBERG. IS 
 
 Banished is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye 
 Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. 
 
 Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard ; 
 But thy painter, Albrecht Diirer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler bard. 
 
 Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, 
 As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his 
 careless lay ; 
 
 Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, 
 The nobility of labour, the long pedigree of toil.
 
 THE NORMAN BARON. 
 
 Dans les moments <le la vie oil la reflexion devient plus calnie et plus profonde, ou 1'in- 
 teret et 1'avarice parlent moins haut que laraison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, 
 de maladie, et de peril de mort, les nobles se repentirent de possfider des serfs, comme 
 d'une chose peu agreable a Dieu, qui avait cree tous les hommes a son image. 
 
 THIERRY : CONQUETE DE I/ANGLETERHE. 
 
 IN his chamber, weak, and dying, 
 Was the Norman baron lying ; 
 Loud, without, the tempest thundered, 
 And the castle-turret shook. 
 
 In this tight was Death the gainer, 
 Spite of vassal and retainer, 
 And the lands his sires had plundered, 
 Written in the Doomsday Book. 
 
 By his bed a monk was seated, 
 Who in humble voice repeated 
 Many a prayer and pater-noster, 
 From the missal on his knee ; 
 
 And, amid the tempest pealing, 
 Sounds of bells came faintly stealing, 
 Bells, that, from the neighbouring cloister, 
 Rang for the Nativity.
 
 THE NORMAN BARON. 197 
 
 11 the hall, the serf and vassal 
 Held, that night, their Christmas wassail; 
 Many a carol, old and saintly, 
 
 Sang the minstrels and the waits. 
 
 And so loud these Saxon gleemeu 
 Sang to slaves the songs of freemen, 
 That the storm was heard but faintly, 
 Knocking at the castle gates. 
 
 Till at length the lays they chaunted 
 Reached the chamber terror-haunted, 
 Where the monk, with accents holy, 
 Whispered at the baron's ear. 
 
 Tears upon his eyelids glistened, 
 As he paused awhile and listened, 
 And the dying baron slowly 
 
 Turned his weaiy head to hear. 
 
 " Wassail for the kingly stranger 
 Bora and cradled in a manger ! 
 King, like David, priest, like Aaron, 
 Christ is born to set us free ! " 
 
 And the lightning showed the sainted 
 Figures on the casement painted, 
 And exclaimed the shuddering baron, 
 " Miserere, Domine ! "
 
 198 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 In that hour of deep contrition, 
 He beheld, with clearer vision, 
 Through all outward show and fashion, 
 Justice, the Avenger, rise. 
 
 All the pomp of earth had vanished, 
 Falsehood and deceit were banished, 
 Reason spake more loud than passion, 
 And the truth wore no disguise. 
 
 Every vassal of his banner, 
 Every serf born to his manor, 
 All those wronged and wretched creatures, 
 By his hand were freed again. 
 
 And, as on the sacred missal, 
 He recorded their dismissal, 
 Death relaxed his iron features, 
 
 And the monk replied, " Amen ! " 
 
 Many centuries have been numbered 
 Since in death the baron slumbered 
 By the convent's sculptured portal, 
 Mingling with the common dust : 
 
 But the good deed, through the ages 
 Living in historic pages, 
 Brighter grows and gleams immortal, 
 Unconsumcd by moth or rust.
 
 RAIN IN SUMMER, 
 
 How beautiful is the rain ! 
 After the dust and heat, 
 In the broad and fiery street, 
 In the narrow lane, 
 How beautiful is the rain ! 
 
 How it clatters along the roofs, 
 
 Like the tramp of hoofs ! 
 
 How it gushes and struggles out 
 
 From the throat of the overflowing spout ! 
 
 Across the window pane . 
 
 It pours and pours ; 
 
 And swift and wide, 
 
 With a muddy tide, 
 
 Like a river down the gutter roars 
 
 The rain, the welcome rain ! 
 
 The sick man from his chamber looks 
 
 At the twisted brooks ; 
 
 He can feel the cool 
 
 Breath of each little pool ; 
 
 His fevered brain 
 
 Grows calm again, 
 
 And he breathes a blessing on the rain. 
 
 From the neighbouring school 
 
 Come the boys, 
 
 With more than their wonted noise
 
 200 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 And commotion ; 
 And down the wet streets 
 Sail their mimic fleets, 
 Till the treacherous pool 
 Engulfs them in its whirling 
 And turbulent ocean. 
 
 In the country, on every side, 
 
 Where far and wide, 
 
 Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide, 
 
 Stretches the plain, 
 
 To the dry grass and the dryer grain 
 
 How welcome is the rain ! 
 
 In the furrowed land 
 
 The toilsome and patient oxen stand ; 
 
 Lifting the yoke-encumbered head, 
 
 With their dilated nostrils spread, 
 
 They silently inhale 
 
 The clover-scented gale, 
 
 And the vapours that arise 
 
 From the well watered and smoking soil. 
 
 For this rest in the furrow after toil 
 
 Their large and lustrous eyes 
 
 Seem to thank the Lord, 
 
 More than man's spoken Avord. 
 
 Near at hand, 
 
 From under the sheltering trees, 
 
 The fanner sees 
 
 His pastures, and his fields of grain,
 
 As they bend their tops 
 
 To the numberless beating drops 
 
 Of the incessant rain. 
 
 He counts it as no sin 
 
 f 
 That he sees therein 
 
 Only his own thrift and gain. 
 
 These, and far more than these, 
 The Poet sees !
 
 203 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 He can behold 
 
 Aquarius old 
 
 Walking the fenceless fields of air ; 
 
 And from each ample fold 
 
 Of the clouds about him rolled 
 
 Scattering everywhere 
 
 The showery rain, 
 
 As the farmer scatters his grain. 
 
 He can behold 
 
 Things manifold 
 
 That have not yet been wholly told, 
 
 Have not been wholly sung nor said. 
 
 For his thought, that never stops, 
 
 Follows the water-drops 
 
 Down to the graves of the dead, 
 
 Down through chasms and gulfs profound, 
 
 To the dreaiy fountain-head 
 
 Of lakes and rivers under ground ; 
 
 And sees them, when the rain is done, 
 
 On the bridge of colours seven 
 
 Climbing up once more to heaven, 
 
 Opposite the setting sun. 
 
 Thus the Seer, 
 
 With vision clear, 
 
 Sees forms appear and disappear, 
 
 In the perpetual round of strange, 
 
 Mysterious change 
 
 From birth to death, from death to birth, 
 
 From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth
 
 TO A CHILD. 
 
 Till glimpses more sublime 
 
 Of things, unseen before, 
 
 Unto his wondering eyes reveal 
 
 The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel 
 
 Turning for evermore 
 
 In the rapid and rushing river of Time. 
 
 TO A CHILD. 
 
 DEAR child ! how radiant on thy mother's knee, 
 
 With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, 
 
 Thou gazest at the painted tiles, 
 
 Whose figures grace, 
 
 With many a grotesque form and face, 
 
 The ancient chimney of thy nursery ! 
 
 The lady with the gay macaw, 
 
 The dancing girl, the grave bashaw 
 
 With bearded lip and chin ; 
 
 And, leaning idly o'er his gate, 
 
 Beneath the imperial fan of state 
 
 The Chinese mandarin. 
 
 With what a look of proud command 
 Thou shakest in thy little hand 
 The coral rattle with its silver bells, 
 Making a merry tune ! 
 Thousands of years in Indian seas 
 That coral grew, by slow degrees, 
 Until some deadly and wild monsoon 
 Dashed it on Coromandel's sand !
 
 JO I 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Those silver bells 
 
 Iteposed of yore, 
 
 As shapeless ore, 
 
 Far down in the deep-sunken wells 
 
 Of darksome mines, 
 
 In some obscure and sunless place, 
 
 Beneath hug-c Chimborazo's base, 
 
 Or steep Potosvs mountain pines !
 
 TO A CHILD. 
 
 And thus for thee, O little child, 
 
 Through many a danger and escape, 
 
 The tall ships passed the stormy cape ; 
 
 For thee in foreign lands remote, 
 
 Beneath a burning, tropic clime, 
 
 The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat, 
 
 Himself as swift and wild, 
 
 In falling, clutched the frail arbute, 
 
 The fibres of whose shallow root, 
 
 Uplifted from the soil, betrayed 
 
 The silver veins beneath it laid, 
 
 The buried treasures of the miser, Time. 
 
 But, lo ! thy door is left ajar ! 
 
 Thou hearest footsteps from afar ! 
 
 And, at the sound, 
 
 Thou turnest round 
 
 With quick and questioning eyes, 
 
 Like one, who, in a foreign land, 
 
 Beholds on every hand 
 
 Some source of wonder and surprise ! 
 
 And, restlessly, impatiently, 
 
 Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free. 
 
 The four walls of thy nursery 
 
 Are now like prison walls to thee. 
 
 No more thy mother's smiles, 
 
 No more the painted tiles, 
 
 Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor, 
 
 That won thy little, beating heart before ; 
 
 Thou strugglest for the open door.
 
 206 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Through these once solitary halls 
 
 Thy pattering footstep falls. 
 
 The sound of thy merry voice 
 
 Makes the old walls 
 
 Jubilant, and they rejoice 
 
 With the joy of thy young heart, 
 
 O'er the light of whose gladness 
 
 No shadows of sadness 
 
 From the sombre background of memory start. 
 
 
 W 
 
 Once, ah, once, within these walls, 
 One whom memory oft recalls, 
 The Father of his Country, dwelt. 
 And yonder meadows broad and damp
 
 TO A CHILD. 207 
 
 The fires of the besieging camp 
 Encircled with a burning belt. 
 Up and down these echoing stairs, 
 Heavy with the weight of cares, 
 Sounded his majestic tread ; 
 Yes, within this very room 
 Sat he in those hours of gloom, 
 Weary both in heart and head. 
 
 But what are these grave thoughts to thee ? 
 
 Out, out ! into the open air ! 
 
 Thy only dream is liberty, 
 
 Thou carest little how or where. 
 
 I see thee eager at thy play, 
 
 Now shouting to the apples on the tree, 
 
 With cheeks as round and red as they ; 
 
 And now among the yellow stalks, 
 
 Among the flowering shrubs and plants, 
 
 As restless as the bee. 
 
 Along the garden walks, 
 
 The tracks of thy small carriage- wheels I trace; 
 
 And see at every turn how they efface 
 
 Whole villages of sand-roofed tents, 
 
 That rise like golden domes 
 
 Above the cavernous and secret homes 
 
 Of wandering and nomadic tribes of ants. 
 
 Ah, cruel little Tamerlane, 
 
 Who, with thy dreadful reign, 
 
 Dost persecute and overwhelm 
 
 These hapless Troglodytes of thy realm !
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 What ! tired already ! with those suppliant looks, 
 And voice more beautiful than a poet's hooks, 
 Or murmuring sound of water as it flows, 
 Thou comest back to parley with repose ! 
 
 This rustic seat in the old apple-tree, 
 
 With its o'erhanging golden canopy 
 
 Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues, 
 
 And shining with the argent light of dews, 
 
 Shall for a season be our place of rest. 
 
 Beneath us, like an oriole's pendent nest, 
 
 From which the laughing birds have taken wing, 
 
 By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing. 
 
 Dream-like the waters of the river gleam ; 
 
 A sail-less vessel drops adown the stream, 
 
 And like it, to a sea as wide and deep, 
 
 Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep. 
 
 O child! O new-born denizen 
 Of life's great city ! on thy head
 
 TO A CHILD. 209 
 
 The glory of the morn is shed, 
 
 Like a celestial benison ! 
 
 Here at the portal thou dost stand, 
 
 And with thy little hand 
 
 Thou openest the mysterious gate 
 
 Into the future's undiscovered land. 
 
 I see its valves expand, 
 
 As at the touch of Fate ! 
 
 Into those realms of love and hate, 
 
 Into that darkness blank and drear, 
 
 By some prophetic feeling taught, 
 
 I launch the bold, adventurous thought, 
 
 Freighted with hope and fear ; 
 
 As upon subterranean streams, 
 
 In caverns unexplored and dark, 
 
 Men sometimes launch a fragile bark, 
 
 Laden with flickering fire, 
 
 And watch its swift-receding beams, 
 
 Until at length they disappear, 
 
 And in the distant dark expire. 
 
 By what astrology of fear or hope 
 
 Dare I to cast thy horoscope ! 
 
 Like the new moon thy life appears ; 
 
 A little strip of silver light, 
 
 And widening outward into night 
 
 The shadowy disk of future years ; 
 
 And yet upon its outer rim, 
 
 A luminous circle, faint and dim,
 
 210 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 And scarcely visible to us here, 
 
 Rounds and completes the perfect sphere : 
 
 A prophecy and intimation, 
 
 A pale and feeble adumbration, 
 
 Of the great world of light, that lies 
 
 Behind all human destinies. 
 
 Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught, 
 Should be to wet the dusty soil 
 With the hot tears and sweat of toil,- 
 To struggle with imperious thought, 
 Until the overburdened brain, 
 Weary with labour, faint with pain, 
 Like a jarred pendulum, retain 
 Only its motion, not its power, 
 Remember in that perilous hour, 
 When most afflicted and oppressed, 
 From labour there shall come forth rest. 
 
 And if a more auspicious fate 
 On thy advancing steps await, 
 Still let it ever be thy pride 
 To linger by the labourer's side ; 
 With words of sympathy or song 
 To cheer the dreary march along 
 Of the great army of the poor, 
 O 'er desert sand, o 'er dangerous moor. 
 Nor to thyself the task shall be 
 Without reward ; for thou shalt learn 
 The wisdom early to discern 
 True beauty in utility ;
 
 THE OCCULTATION OF ORION. 211 
 
 As great Pythagoras of yore, 
 Standing beside the blacksmith's door, 
 And hearing the hammers, as they smote 
 The anvils with a different note, 
 Stole from the varying tones, that hung 
 Vibrant on every iron tongue, 
 The secret of the sounding wire, 
 And formed the seven-chorded lyre. 
 
 Enough ! I will not play the Seer ; 
 I will no longer strive to ope 
 The mystic volume, where appear 
 The herald Hope, forerunning Fear, 
 And Fear, the pursuivant of Hope. 
 Thy destiny remains untold ; 
 For, like Acestes' shaft of old, 
 The swift thought kindles as it flies, 
 And bums to ashes in the skies. 
 
 THE OCCULTATION OF ORION. 
 
 I SAW, as in a dream sublime, 
 The balance in the hand of Time. 
 O'er East and West its beam impended 
 And day, with all its hours of light, 
 Was slowly sinking out of sight, 
 While, opposite, the scale of night 
 Silently with the stars ascended. 
 
 Like the astrologers of eld, 
 In that bright vision I beheld
 
 212 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Greater and deeper mysteries. 
 
 I saw, with its celestial keys, 
 
 Its chords of air, its frets of fire, 
 
 The Samian's great .ZEolian lyre, 
 
 Rising through all its sevenfold bars, 
 
 From earth unto the fixed stars. 
 
 And through the dewy atmosphere, 
 
 Not only could I see, but hear, 
 
 Its wondrous and harmonious strings, 
 
 In sweet vibration, sphere by sphere, 
 
 From Dian's circle light and near, 
 
 Onward to vaster and wider rings, 
 
 Where, chanting through his beard of snows, 
 
 Majestic, mournful, Saturn goes, 
 
 And down the sunless realms of space 
 
 Reverberates the thunder of his bass. 
 
 Beneath the sky's triumphal arch 
 This music sounded like a march, 
 And with its chorus seemed to be 
 Preluding some great tragedy. 
 Sirius was rising in the east ; 
 And, slow ascending one by one, 
 The kindling constellations shone. 
 Begirt with many a blazing star, 
 Stood the great giant Algebar, 
 Orion, hunter of the beast ! 
 His sword hung gleaming by his side, 
 And, on his arm, the lion's hide 
 Scattered across the midnight air 
 The golden radiance of its hair.
 
 The moon was pallid, but not faint ; 
 And beautiful as some fair saint, 
 Serenely moving on her way 
 In hours of trial and dismay. 
 As if she heard the voice of God, 
 Unharmed with naked feet she trod
 
 ^14 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 Upon the hot and burning stars, 
 As on the glowing coals and bars 
 That were to prove her strength, and try 
 Her holiness and her purity. 
 
 Thus moving on, with silent pace, 
 
 And triumph in her sweet, pale face, 
 
 She reached the station of Orion. 
 
 Aghast he stood in strange alarm ! 
 
 And suddenly from his outstretched aria 
 
 Down fell the red skin of the lion 
 
 Into the river at his feet. 
 
 His mighty club no longer beat 
 
 The forehead of the bull; but he 
 
 Reeled as of yore beside the sea, 
 
 When, blinded by (Enopion, 
 
 He sought the blacksmith at his forge, 
 
 And, climbing up the mountain gorge, 
 
 Fixed his blank eyes upon the sun. 
 
 Then, through the silence overhead, 
 
 An angel with a trumpet said, 
 
 " Forevermore, forevermore, 
 
 The reign of violence is o'er ! " 
 
 And, like an instrument that flings 
 
 Its music on another's strings, 
 
 The trumpet of the angel cast 
 
 Upon the heavenly lyre its blast, 
 
 And on from sphere to sphere the words 
 
 Reechoed down the burning chords, 
 
 " Forevermore, forevermore, 
 
 The reign of violence is o 'er ! "
 
 THE BRIDGE. 
 
 I STOOD on the bridge at midnight, 
 
 As the clocks were striking the hour, 
 
 And the moon rose o'er the city, 
 Behind the dark church tower. 
 
 I saw her bright reflection 
 In the waters under me, 
 
 Like a golden goblet falling 
 And sinking into the sea.
 
 21 1! MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 And far in the hazy distance 
 
 Of that lovely night in June, 
 
 The blaze of the flaming furnace 
 Gleamed redder than the moon. 
 
 Among the long, black rafters 
 The wavering shadows lay, 
 
 And the current that came from the ocean 
 Seemed to lift and bear them away ; 
 
 As, sweeping and eddying through them, 
 
 Rose the belated tide, 
 And, streaming into the moonlight, 
 
 The seaweed floated wide. 
 
 And like those waters rushing 
 
 Among the wooden piers, 
 A flood of thoughts came o 'er me 
 
 That filled my eyes with tears. 
 
 How often, O, how often, 
 
 In the days that had gone by, 
 
 I had stood on that bridge at midnight 
 And gazed on that wave and sky ! 
 
 How often, O, how often, 
 
 I had wished that the ebbing tide 
 Would bear me away on its bosom 
 
 O 'er the ocean wild and wide !
 
 THE BRIDGE. 217 
 
 For my heart was hot and restless, 
 And my life was full of care, 
 
 And the burden laid upon me 
 
 Seemed greater than I could bear. 
 
 But now it has fallen from me, 
 
 It is buried in the sea ; 
 And only the sorrow of others 
 
 Throws its shadow over me. 
 
 Yet whenever I cross the river 
 
 On its bridge with wooden piers, 
 
 Like the odour of brine from the ocean 
 Comes the thought of other years. 
 
 And I think how many thousands 
 
 Of care-encumbered men, 
 Each bearing his burden of sorrow, 
 
 Have crossed the bridge since then. 
 
 I see the long procession 
 
 Still passing to and fro, 
 The young heart hot and restless, 
 
 And the old subdued and slow ! 
 
 And forever and forever, 
 
 As long as the river flows, 
 
 As long as the heart has passions, 
 As long as life has woes; 
 
 c c
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 
 The moon and its broken reflection 
 And its shadows shall appeal 1 , 
 
 As the symbol of love in heaven, 
 And its wavering image here. 
 
 TO THE DRIVING CLOUD. 
 
 GLOOMY and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omawhaws ; 
 Gloomy and dark, as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast 
 
 taken ! 
 
 AYrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through, the city's 
 Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers *' 
 Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their footprints. 
 What, in a few short years, will remain of thy race but the foot- 
 prints ? 
 
 How canst thou walk in these streets, who hast trod the green turf of 
 
 the prairies ? 
 How canst thou breathe in this air, who hast breathed the sweet air 
 
 of the mountains ? 
 
 Ah ! 't is in vain that with lordly looks of disdain thou dost challenge 
 Looks of dislike in return, and question these walls and these 
 
 pavements, 
 Claiming the soil for thy hunting-grounds, while down-trodden 
 
 millions 
 
 Starve in the garrets of Europe, and cry from its caverns that they, too, 
 Have been created heirs of the earth, and claim its division ! 
 Back, then, back to thy woods in the regions west of the Wubash !
 
 TO THE DRIVING CLOUD. 
 
 There as a monarch thou reignest. In autumn the leaves of the 
 maple 
 
 Pave the floors of thy palace halls with gold, and in summer 
 
 Pine trees waft through its chambers the odorous breath of their 
 branches. 
 
 There thou art strong and great, a hero, a tamer of horses ! 
 
 There thou chasest the stately stag on the banks of the Elk- 
 horn, 
 
 Or by the roar of the Running- Water, or where the Omawhaw 
 
 Calls thee, and leaps through the wild ravine like a brave of the 
 Blackfeet ! 
 
 Hark ! what murmurs arise from the heart of those mountainous 
 
 deserts ? 
 
 Is it the cry of the Foxes and Crows, or the mighty Behemoth, 
 Who, unharmed, on his tusks once caught the bolts of the thunder, 
 And now lurks in his lair to destroy the race of the red man ? 
 Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the Crows and the Foxes, 
 Far more fatal to thee and thy race than the tread of Behemoth, 
 Lo ! the big thunder-canoe, that steadily breasts the Missouri's 
 Merciless current ! and yonder, afar on the prairies, the camp-fires 
 Gleam through the night ; and the cloud of dust in the gray of the 
 
 daybreak 
 
 Marks not the buffalo's track, nor the Mandan's dexterous horse- 
 race ; 
 
 It is a caravan, whitening the desert where dwell the Camanches ! 
 Ha ! how the breath of these Saxons and Celts, like the blast of the 
 
 east-wind, 
 Drifts evermore to the west the scanty smokes of thy wigwams!
 
 CURFEW. 
 I. 
 
 SOLEMNLY, mournfully, 
 
 Dealing its dole, 
 The Curfew Bell 
 
 Is beginning to toll. 
 
 Cover the embers, 
 
 And put out the light ; 
 Toil comes with the morning, 
 
 And rest with the night. 
 
 Dark grow the windows, 
 And quenched is the fire 
 
 Sound fades into silence, 
 All footsteps retire.
 
 No voice in the chambers, 
 No sound in the hall ! 
 
 Sleep and oblivion 
 Reign over all ! 
 
 II. 
 
 The book is completed, 
 
 And closed, like the day ; 
 
 And the hand that has written it 
 Lays it away. 
 
 Dim grow its fancies ; 
 
 Forgotten they lie ; 
 Like coals in the ashes, 
 
 They darken and die. 
 
 Song sinks into silence, 
 
 The story is told, 
 The windows are darkened, 
 
 The hearth-stone is cold. 
 
 Darker and darker 
 
 The black shadows fall ; 
 Sleep and oblivion 
 
 Reign over all.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Behold, at last, 
 
 Each tall and tapering mast 
 
 In swung into its place. PAGE 39. 
 
 I wish to anticipate a criticism on this passage by stating, that sometimes, 
 though not usual!}-, vessels are launched fully rigged and sparred. I have 
 availed myself of the exception, as better suited to my purposes than the 
 general rule ; but the reader will see that it is neither a blunder nor a poetic 
 license. On this subject a friend in Portland, Maine, writes me thus : 
 
 "In this State, and also, I am told, in New York, ships are sometimes 
 rigged upon the stocks, in order to save time, or to make a show. There 
 was a fine, large ship launched last summer at Ellsworth, fully rigged and 
 sparred. Some years ago a ship was launched here, with her rigging, spars, 
 sails, and cargo aboard. She sailed the next day and was never heard of 
 again ! I hope this will not be the fate of your poem ! " 
 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert. PAGE 52. 
 
 " When the wind abated and the vessels were near enough, the Admiral 
 was seen constantly sitting in the stern, with a book iu his hand. On the 
 9th of September he was seen for the last time, and was heard by the people 
 of the Hind to say, ' "We are as near heaven by sea as by land.' In the fol- 
 lowing night, the lights of the ship suddenly disappeared. The people in 
 the other vessel kept a good look-out for him during the remainder of the 
 voyage. On the 22nd of September they arrived, through much tempest and 
 peril, at Falmouth. But nothing more was seen or heard of the Admiral/' 
 BELKNAP'S American Biography, I. 203. 
 
 Walter von der Vogelweide. PAGE 126. 
 
 Walter von der Vogelweide, or Bird-Meadow, was one of the principal 
 Minnesingers of the thirteenth century. He triumphed over Henrich von 
 Ofterdingen in that poetic contest at Wartburg Castle, known in literary 
 history as the War of Wartburg.
 
 Like imperial Charlemagne. PAGE 137. 
 
 Charlemagne may bo called by preeminence the monarch of farmers. 
 According to the German tradition, in seasons of great abundance, his spirit 
 crosses the Ehine on a golden bridge at Bingen, and blesses the cornfields 
 and the vineyards. During his lifetime, he did not disdain, says Mon- 
 tesquieu, " to sell the eggs from the farm-yards of his domains, and the 
 superfluous vegetables of his gardens ; while he distributed among his people 
 the wealth of the Lombards and the immense treasures of the Huns." 
 
 All the Foresters of Flanders. PAGE 185. 
 
 The title of Foresters was given to the early governors of Flanders, 
 appointed by the kings of France. Lyderick du Bucq, in the days of Clotairc 
 the Second, was the first of them ; and Beaudoin Bras-de-Fer, who stole away 
 the fair Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, from the French court, and 
 married her in Bruges, was the last. After him, the title of Forester was 
 changed to that of Count. Philippe d'Alsace, Guy de Dampierre, and Louis 
 de Crecy, coming later in the order of time, were therefore rather Counts 
 than Foresters. Philippe went twice to the Holy Land as a Crusader, and 
 died of the plague at St. Jean-d'Acre, shortly after the capture of the city 
 by the Christians. Guy de Dampierre died in the prison of Compiegnc. 
 Louis de Crecy was son and successor of Robert de Bethunc, who strangled his 
 wife, Yolande de Bourgogne, with the bridle of his horse, for having poisoned 
 at the age of eleven years, Charles, his son by his first wife, Blanche d'Anjou, 
 
 Stately dames, like queens attended. PAGE 185. 
 
 When Philippe-le-Bel, king of France, visited Flanders with his queen, 
 she was so astonished at the magnificence of the dames of Bruges, that she 
 exclaimed, "Je croyais etre seule reine ici, mais il parait que ceux de 
 Flandre qui se trouvent dans nos prisons sont tous des princes, car leurs 
 femmes sont habillees comme des princesses et des reines." 
 
 When the burgomasters of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, went to Paris to 
 pay homage to King John, in 1351, they were received with great pomp 
 and distinction ; but, being invited to a festival, they observed that their 
 seats at table were not furnished with cushions ; whereupon, to make known 
 their displeasure at this want of regard to their dignity, they folded their 
 richly embroidered cloaks and seated themselves upon them. On rising from
 
 table, they left their cloaks behind them, and, being informed of their apparent 
 forgctfulness, Simon van Eertrycke, burgomaster of Bruges, replied, ""We 
 Flemings are not in the habit of carrying away our cushions after dinner." 
 
 Knights who bore the Fleece of Gold. PACE 185. 
 
 Philippe de Bourgogne, surnamed Le Bon, espoused Isabella of Portugal, 
 on the 10th of January, 1430 ; and on the same day instituted the famous 
 order of the Fleece of Gold. 
 
 / beheld the gentle Mary. PAGE 186. 
 
 Marie de Valois, Duchess of Burgundy, was left by the death of her 
 father, Charles-le-Temeraire, at the age of twenty, the richest heiress of 
 Europe. She came to Bruges, as Countess of Flanders, in 1477, and in the 
 same year was married by'proxy to the Archduke Maximilian. According 
 to the custom of the time, the Duke of Bavaria, Maximilian's substitute, 
 slept with the princess. They were both in complete dress, separated by a 
 naked sword, and attended by four armed guards. Mary was adored by her 
 subjects for her gentleness and her many other virtues. 
 
 Maximilian was son of the Emperor Frederick the Third, and is the same 
 person mentioned afterwards in the poem of Nuremberg as the Kaiser Maxi- 
 milian, and the hero of Pfinzing's poem of Teuerdank. Having been im- 
 prisoned by the revolted burghers of Bruges, they refused to release him, till 
 he consented to kneel in the public square, and to swear on the Holy Evan- 
 gelists and the body of Saint Donatus, that he would not take vengeance 
 upon them for their rebellion. 
 
 The bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold. PAGE 186. 
 
 This battle, the most memorable in Flemish history, was fought under 
 the walls of Courtray, on the llth of July, 1302, between the French and 
 the Flemings, the former commanded by Robert, Comte d'Artois, and the 
 latter by Guillaume de Juliers, and Jean, Comte de Namtir. The French 
 army was completely routed, with a loss of twenty thousand infantry and 
 seven thousand cavalry ; among whom were sixty-three princes, dukes, and 
 
 D D
 
 226 NOTES. 
 
 counts, seven hundred lords-banneret, and eleven hundred noblemen. The 
 flower of the French nobility perished on that day ; to which history has 
 given the name of the Journee des Eperons d' Or, from the great number of 
 golden spurs found on the field of battle. Seven hundred of them were 
 hung up as a trophy in the church of Notre Dame de Courtray ; and, as the 
 cavaliers of that day wore but a single spur each, these vouched to God for the 
 violent and bloody death of seven hundred of his creatures. 
 
 Saiv the fight at Minneicater. PAGE 186. 
 
 When the inhabitants of Bruges were digging a canal at Minnewater, 
 to bring the waters of the Lys from Deynze to their city, they were attacked 
 and routed by the citizens of Ghent, whose commerce would have been much 
 injured by the canal. They were led by Jean Lyons, captain of a military 
 company at Ghent, called the Chaperons Blancs. lie had great sway over 
 the turbulent populace, who, in those prosperous times of the city, gained 
 an easy livelihood by labouring two or three days in the week, and had the 
 remaining four or five to devote to public affairs. The fight at Minnewater 
 was followed by open rebellion against Louis de Maele, the Count of Flan- 
 ders and Protector of Bruges. His superb chateau of AYondelghem was 
 pillaged and burnt ; and the insurgents forced the gates of Bruges, and 
 entered in triumph with Lyons mounted at their head. A few days after- 
 wards he died suddenly, perhaps by poison. 
 
 Meanwhile the insurgents received a check at the village of Nevele ; and 
 two hundred of them perished in the church, which was burned by the Count's 
 orders. One of the chiefs, Jean de Lannoy, took refuge in the belfry. From 
 the summit of the tower he held forth his purse filled with gold, and begged 
 for deliverance. It was in vain. His enemies cried to him from below to 
 save himself as best he might ; and, half suffocated with smoke and flame, 
 he threw himself from the tower and perished at their feet. Peace was soon 
 afterwards established, and the Count retired to faithful Bruges. 
 
 The Golden Dragon's nest. PAGE 186. 
 
 The Golden Dragon, taken from the church of St. Sophia, at Constanti- 
 ople, in one of the Crusades, and placed on the belfry of Bruges, was after-
 
 words transported to Ghent by Philip van Artcveklc, and still adorns the 
 belfry of that city. 
 
 The inscription on the alarm-bell at Ghent is, " Nynen naem is Roland; ah 
 ik Jdep is er brand, and als ik luy is er victorie in het land." My name is Ro- 
 land ; when I toll there is fire, and when I ring there is victory in the land. 
 
 That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. PAGE 193. 
 An old popular proverb of the town runs thus : 
 
 " Nurnbei'ff's Sand 
 Geht durch alle Land." 
 
 Nuremberg's hand 
 Goes through every land. 
 
 Sat the poet Melchiur singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. PAGE 193. 
 
 Melchior Pfinzing was one of the most celebrated German poets of the 
 sixteenth century. The hero of his Teuerdank was the reigning emperor, 
 Maximilian ; and the poem was to the Germans of that day what the Orlando 
 Furioso was to the Italians. Maximilian is mentioned before, in the Belfry 
 of Bruges. See Page 277. 
 
 In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust. PAGE 193. 
 
 The tomb of Saint Sebald, in the church which bears his name, is one of 
 the richest works of art in Nuremberg. It is of bronze, and was cast by 
 Peter Vischer and his sons, who laboured upon it thirteen years. It is 
 adorned with nearly one hundred figures, among which those of the Twelve 
 Apostles are conspicuous for size and beauty. 
 
 In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare. PAGE 193. 
 
 This pix, or tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, is by the hand of 
 Adam Kraft. It is an exquisite piece of sculpture in white stone, and rises 
 to the height of sixty-four feet. It stands in the choir, whose richly painted 
 windows cover it with varied colours.
 
 Wisest oftJie Twelve Wise Masters. PAGE 193. 
 
 The Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the original corporation of the 
 Mastersingers. Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg, though not one of 
 the original Twelve, was the most renowned of the Mastersingers, as 
 well as the most voluminous. He flourished in the sixteenth century ; and 
 left behind him thirty-four folio volumes of manuscript, containing two 
 hundred and eight plays, one thousand and seven hundred comic tales, and 
 between four and five thousand lyric poems. 
 
 As in Adam Puschman's song. PAGE 196. 
 
 Adam Puschman, in his poem on the death of Hans Sachs, describes him 
 as he appeared in a vision : 
 
 "An old man, 
 
 Gray and -white, and dove like, 
 "Who had, in sooth, a great beard, 
 And read in a fair, great hook, 
 Beautiful with golden clasps." 
 
 The Occupation of Orion. PAGE 211. 
 
 Astronomically speaking, this title is incorrect ; as I apply to a constel- 
 lation what can properly be applied to some of its stars only. But my 
 observation is made from the hill of song, and not from that of science ; and 
 will, I trust, be found sufficiently accurate for the present purpose.
 
 L.OKAIIFOJ 
 
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