Merrily ringing o'er their way,
As it were making holiday.
At length the river broadened forth,
And sunk the noisy town behind,
And swept the breezy billows by,
Fresh foaming from the distant sky,
Where hosted shipping round the North,
Full breasted in the steady wind,
Came courtesying along the sea
From the blue spacing Zuyder-Zee.
In slanting drifts the city's smoke
Curtained the sinking spires, and o'er
The sidelong stretch of shelving shore
In bursts the sunlit surges broke;
Upon each passing headland's height
Fantastic windmills quaint and brown
Whirred busily; and, poised in light,
The gull with red eye peering down :
Thus on, until at length they reached
A watery suburb, where they beached.
Above them, girt by gnarled trees,
Arose an antique mansion, tall
And lonely; down each mouldering wall,
Jutted with drowsy balconies,
Dim trailers drooping from the eaves,
Hooded with glossy ivy leaves,
O'er gable quaint and window small
Festooned their wind-swung draperies.
Around its portal gray the sun
Played slumbrously, and swooned the air
Up from the glimmering lowland there,
In languid pulses; while upon
Its tortuous stairs of aged stone
The sea-sand gathered in each nook, -
The flaggers waved, the salt grass shook.
Into its hall the merchant paced,
And from his sunny doze, beside
A window looking o'er the tide,
A quaint old varlet rose in haste;
And, bowing brows of scattered gray,
Along the creaking dusty floors.
And through the echoing corridors
And noiseless chambers led the way:
The room is reached, the lock is turned,
The painter flings his brush aside,
And by the lamp's red glow, that burned
Beside his picture, sees the friend
Of vanished summers o'er him bend;
While hands are clasped, and on each brow
Dead memories kindle, as they say,
In cordial chorus, "Well, and how
How hast thou been this many a day?"
""T is twenty years since we have met,"
The burgomaster cried; "and yet
As hale and hearty, God be blessed,
Are we as when, in summers past,
We gave our life-sail to the blast.
What matters it, if silvered brows
Bring golden purses, and our thrift
Secures us plenty as we drift
To harbor in the sunless west?
Mine are the merchant's views of time;
Content to pass my day in trade,
Content at night if I have made
The means to entertain a guest :
A narrow view, a sordid strife,
More selfish, comrade, than sublime
This same,
- and your good years, I trow,
Are kindled with a nobler glow."
Dark is the chamber, though 't is day;
Curtained and lighted from the blue
By one thin streaming ray that through
The domed roof falls splendrously:
Unlike the gloried studios
By Tiber's yellow wave, or where,
Through alder rows and banks aglare,
The sunny rippled Arno flows.
No Grecian bust or statue shows
Its pure ideal outline there;
No Cupid smiles, no Venus glows
Voluptuous languors through the air;
But duskily the light streams o'er
Rich turbans tumbled on the floor.
Around the stretch of shadowing walls,
Gloomy as Eblis' palace halls,
Hang garbs of many a distant land.
Great giant armor, casque and brand,
Inlaid with subtlest traceries,
Send forth a dim uncertain sheen
Beneath the skirt of ebon palls,
Swart cowls, and Jewish gabardine,
Long Moorish cloaks, and Persian shawls:
Nor there of instruments of pain
And iron anguish, screw and rack
Blood-rusted, seemed there any lack;
While draped across a mirror's disk
The cincture of some Odalisque
Glimmered amid a motley train
Of skins, and mighty ocean bones,
And plumages from burning zones,
Skulls, shells, and arid skeletons,
O'erstrewn with aureate draperies.
Then for a time the painter dashed
His canvas o'er with many a hue;
Broad shadow-masses fell, and flashed
The keen lights over lip and eye,
As glowingly and steadily
The face beneath his pencil grew ;
Through the half-open curtain slid
The silent lights, and sunnily
Without the casement voyaged the bee
With busy hum along, or hid
In wallflowers streaked with gold and brown;
The skylark o'er the island saug;
Till faintly from the distaut town
The bell through smoky steeples rang
The hour of silent afternoon.
ELFT! envy not the Maese, let her Erasmus claim :
De Groot is great as he,—his glorious end and aim Were Holland's happiness; but discord would not heed, And unity was lost in difference of creed.
Could Holland's provinces have shared his noble mind, United Netherland had still remained combined.
Gerald Brandt. Tr. John Bowring.
Dort (Dortrecht).
A DUTCH PICTURE.
IMON DANZ has come home again,
From cruising about with his buccaneers;
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles,
And weather-cocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
Of carpets rich and rare.
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