were stone;

And the vast hall was filled in every part With silent crowds, stony in face and heart.

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed

The trembling clerk in speechless wonder gazed;

Then from the table, by his greed made bold,

He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, And suddenly from their seats the guests upsprang,

The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors rang,

The archer sped his arrow, at their call, Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall,

And all was dark around and overhead ;Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay dead!

The writer of this legend then records
Its ghostly application in these words:
The image is the Adversary old,
Whose beckoning finger points to realms
of gold;

Our lusts and passions are the downward stair

That leads the soul from a diviner air; The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, Life;

Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife;

The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone

By avarice have been hardened into stone;

chased

less strife,

The discord in the harmonies of life! The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books; The market-place, the eager love of gain, Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain!

zone,

told

To men grown old, or who are growing old?

It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpi

tate.

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Edipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,

When each had numbered more than fourscore years,

And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,

At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past.

These are indeed exceptions; but they show

How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow

Into the arctic regions of our lives, Where little else than life itself survives.

As the barometer foretells the storm While still the skies are clear, the weather warm,

So something in us, as old age draws

The night hath come; it is no longer day? The night hath not yet come; we are not quite

Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear;
Not Edipus Coloneus, or Greek Öde,
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn,
But other something, would we but be-
gin;

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another
dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

I fear no more the dust and heat,
No more I feel fatigue,
While journeying with another's feet
O'er many a lengthening league.

Let others traverse sea and land,

And toil through various climes, I turn the world round with my hand Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies
Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
Better than with mine own.

CADENABBIA.

LAKE OF COMO.

No sound of wheels or hoof-beat breaks
The silence of the summer day,

As by the loveliest of all lakes
I while the idle hours away.

I pace the leafy colonnade

Where level branches of the plane
Above me weave a roof of shade
Impervious to the sun and rain.

At times a sudden rush of air
Flutters the lazy leaves o'erhead,
And gleams of sunshine toss and flare
Like torches down the path I tread.

By Somariva's garden gate

I make the marble stairs my seat, And hear the water, as I wait, Lapping the steps beneath my feet.

The undulation sinks and swells
Along the stony parapets,
And far away the floating bells

Tinkle upon the fisher's nets.

Silent and slow, by tower and town

The freighted barges come and go, Their pendent shadows gliding down

By town and tower submerged below.

The hills sweep upward from the shore, With villas scattered one by one Upon their wooded spurs, and lower Bellaggio blazing in the sun.

And dimly seen, a tangled mass

Of walls and woods, of light and shade,

Sits Amalfi in the heat, Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.

In the middle of the town,
From its fountains in the hills,
Tumbling through the narrow gorge,
The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills,
Lifts the hammers of the forge.

T is a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear; Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate

Dooms them to this life of toil?

Lord of vineyards and of lands,
Far above the convent stands.
On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands,
Placid, satisfied, serene,

Looking down upon the scene
Over wall and red-tiled roof;
Wondering unto what good end
All this toil and traffic tend,
And why all men cannot be
Free from care and free from pain,
And the sordid love of gain,
And as indolent as he.

Where are now the freighted barks
From the marts of east and west?
Where the knights in iron sarks
Journeying to the Holy Land,
Glove of steel upon the hand,
Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court?
Where the pilgrims with their prayers?
Where the merchants with their wares,
And their gallant brigantines
Sailing safely into port
Chased by corsair Algerines?

Vanished like a fleet of cloud,
Like a passing trumpet-blast,
Are those splendors of the past,
And the commerce and the crowd!
Fathoms deep beneath the seas
Lie the ancient wharves and quays,
Swallowed by the engulfing waves;