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 endeavor; And to-night I long for rest.

Read 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 labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

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;

While 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.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee.

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 the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,
When 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 recallest 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 suminer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
To the Vikings.

Once in Elsinore,

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 chorus!

Peasants in the field,

Sailors on the roaring ocean,

Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, All have sung them.

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 all molestation, And recalling by their voices Youth and travel.

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.

VOGELWEID the Minnesinger,

When he left this world of ours,

Laid his body in the cloister,

Under Wurtzburg'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;

Saying, "From these 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
By the children of the choir.

Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day 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
Was the name of Vogelweid.

Till at length the portly abbot
Marmured, "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, When 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 Vogelweid.

DRINKING SONG.

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER.

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.

Round 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 armor.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
Much this mystic throng expresses;
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
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 from 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.

Even Redi, though he chaunted
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.

I SHOт 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.

THE EVENING STAR.

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West,
Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,
Like a fair 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.

AUTUMN.

THOU Comest, Antumn, heralded by the rain, With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain!

O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom !

To love me in prosperity,
And leave me in adversity!

are thy branches!

Green not alone in summer time,

But in the winter's frost and rime!

thy bosom !

are thy branches!

thine example!

76

It flows so long as falls the rain,

In drought its springs soon dry again.

The meadow brook, the meadow brook, is mirror of thy falsehood!

ANNIE OF THARAW.

FROM THE LOW GERMAN OF SIMON DACH.

ANNIE of Tharaw, my true love of old,
She is my life, and my goods, and my gold.

Annie of Tharaw, her heart once again
To me has surrendered in joy and in pain.
Annie of Tharaw, my riches, my good,
Thou, O my soul, my flesh, and my blood!

Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow,

We will stand by each other, however it blow

Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain Shall be to our true love as links to the chain.

As the palm-tree standeth so straight and so tall, The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall,

So love in our hearts shall grow mighty and strong,

Taroagh crosses, through sorrows, through manifold wrong.

Shouldst thou be torn from me to wander alone In a desolate land where the sun is scarce known,

Through forests I'll follow, and where the sea flows,

Through ice, and through iron, through armies of foes.

Annie of Tharaw, my light and my sun,

The threads of our two lives are woven in one.

Whate'er I have bidden thee thou hast obeyed, Whatever forbidden thou hast not gainsaid.

How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth, and one hand?

Some seek for dissension, and trouble, and strife;
Like a dog and a cat live such man and wife.

Annie of Tharaw, such is not our love;
Thou art my lambkin, my chick, and my dove.
Whate'er my desire is, in thine may be seen;
I am king of the household, and thou art its
queen.

It is this, O my Annie, my heart's sweetest rest,
That makes of us twain but one soul in one breast.

This turns to a heaven the hut where we dwell; Vhile wrangling soon changes a home to a hell.

The cathedral door above; Yet I saw but one among them

Who hath soothed my soul with love.

In his mantle, -wound about him,
As their robes the sowers wind,-
Bore he swallows and their fledglings,
Flowers and weeds of every kind.

And so stands he calm and childlike,
High in wind and tempest wild;
O, were I like him exalted,

I would be like him, a child!

And my songs,-green leaves and blossoms,-
To the doors of heaven would bear,
Calling even in storm and tempest,
Round me still these birds of air.

THE LEGEND OF THE CROSSBILL

FROM THE GERMAN OF JULIUS MOSEN.

ON the cross the dying Saviour

Heavenward lifts his eyelids calm, Feels, but scarcely feels, a trembling In his pierced and bleeding palm.

And by all the world forsaken,
Sees he how with zealous care
At the ruthless nail of iron

A little bird is striving there.

Stained with blood and never tiring,

With its beak it doth not cease, From the cross 't would free the Saviour, Its Creator's Son release.

And the Saviour speaks in mildness:
"Blest be thou of all the good!
Bear, as token of this moment,
Marks of blood and holy rood!"

And that bird is called the crossbill;
Covered all with blood so clear,
In the groves of pine it singeth
Songs, like legends, strange to hear.

THE SEA HATH ITS PEARLS.

FROM THE GERMAN OF HEINRICH HEINE. THE sea hath its pearls,

The heaven hath its stars; But my heart, my heart,

My heart hath its love.

Great are the sea and the heaven;
Yet greater is my heart,
And fairer than pearls and stars
Flashes and beams my love.

Thou little, youthful maiden,
Come unto my great heart;
My heart, and the sea, and the heaven
Are melting away with love!