In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,1

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 Dürer, 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.

Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;

Dead he is not,—but departed,—for the artist never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

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.

1 The tomb of St. Sebald in this church is one of the richest works of art in Nuremberg. It was cast in bronze by Peter Vischer and his sons, who laboured on it for thirteen years. It is adorned with nearly a hundred figures, among which are the Twelve Apostles.

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,1 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,2

As "the old man grey and dove-like," with his great beard white and long.

1 He flourished in the sixteenth century, and left behind him 208 plays, 1700 comic tales, and four or five thousand lyric poems. The Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the original corporation of the Master-singers. Hans Sachs, the cobbler of Nuremberg, though not one of the original Twelve, was the most renowned of the Master-singers, as well as the most voluminous. He left thirty-four folio volumes of manuscript containing the above number of plays, tales, and lyric poetry.

2 Adam Puschman, in his poem on the death of Hans Sachs, describes him as he appeared in a vision :—

"An old man,

Grey and white, and dove-like,

Who had, in sooth, a great beard;

And read in a fair great book,

Beautiful with golden clasps."

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,

Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.

Vanished 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 Dürer, 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 INDIAN HUNTER

WHEN the summer harvest was gathered in,
And the sheaf of the gleaner grew white and thin,
And the ploughshare was in its furrow left,
Where the stubble land had been lately cleft,
An Indian hunter, with unstrung bow,

Looked down where the valley lay stretched below.

He was a stranger there, and that day
Had been out on the hills, a perilous way,
But the foot of the deer was far and fleet,
And the wolf kept aloof from the hunter's feet,
And bitter feelings passed o'er him then,
As he stood by the populous haunts of men.

The winds of autumn came over the woods,
As the sun stole out from their solitudes;
The moss was white on the maple's trunk,
And dead from its arms the pale vine shrunk,
And ripened the mellow fruit hung, and red
Where the trees' withered leaves around it shed.

The foot of the reaper moved slow on the lawn,
And the sickle cut down the yellow corn;
The mower sang loud by the meadow side,
Where the mists of evening were spreading wide;
And the voice of the herdsman came up the lea,
And the dance went round by the greenwood tree.

Then the hunter turned away from that scene,
Where the home of his fathers once had been,
And heard, by the distant and measured stroke,
That the woodman hewed down the giant oak—
And burning thoughts flashed over his mind,
Of the white man's faith, and love unkind.

The moon of the harvest grew high and bright,
As her golden horn pierced the cloud of white,—
A footstep was heard in the rustling brake,
Where the beech overshadowed the misty lake,
A mourning voice, and a plunge from shore,
And the hunter was seen on the hills no more.

When years had passed on, by that still lake side, The fisher looked down through the silver tide, And there, on the smooth yellow sand displayed, A skeleton wasted and white was laid,

And 'twas seen, as the waters moved deep and slow,

That the hand was still grasping a hunter's bow.

THE NORMAN BARON

[Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, où l'intérêt et l'avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de péril de mort, les nobles se repentirent de posséder des serfs, comme d'une chose peu agréable à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à son image.]

THIERRY, Conquête de l'Angleterre.

In his chamber, weak and dying,
Was the Norman baron lying;
Loud, without, the tempest thundered,
And the castle-turret shook.

In this fight 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 a 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 kloster,
Rang for the Nativity.

In 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 gleemen
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.